


Jesse McCree is a Dumb Stupid Idiot

by urgaylol



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Genji Shimada is a Little Shit, M/M, Romantic Tension, Sexual Tension, Slow Burn, a bit of smut at the end, a strange combination of slice of life humor and discussions of dark themes, be warned my sense of humor is specific, bros to hoes, dialog driven so let’s hope we have the same interpretation of their dynamic, don't let the title fool you this is past tense, helo yes I'm not even 20 but i know what it's like to be a 40 year old assassin, if it's any consolation i do hate myself, love confession if you stick through my bullshit, my bad sense of humor, poor comedic timing if you read slow, this is the dumbest thing I've ever written, way longer than it needs to be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-05-23 10:50:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 37,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14932842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/urgaylol/pseuds/urgaylol
Summary: Alternatively named: Hanzo Finds Out That Jesse McCree is Into Him and Pulls Himself Into a Complex Plan of Emotional Seduction Because Heis Too Much of a Coward to Make the First MoveThinks it Will be Fun





	1. Prologue

"They say an unorganized living space reflects an equally undisciplined mind. However, recent events have led me to believe that this must be an overstatement, as if it were fully truthful, your consciousness would be a twisted monstrosity of a place, incapable of formulating thought or even basic reason." said Hanzo Shimada as he hoisted a dusty cardboard box of books onto his hip. His nose wrinkled as he caught sight of the smooshed, hardened orange peels under where the box had been. 

"Yeah, well, they say brevity's the soul a' wit but that ain't never stopped you from jammin' as many words into an insult that'll fit." Jesse replied. 

They were clearing out Jesse's living room. When Jesse had ducked out on their traditional Friday night plans with the excuse of cleaning, Hanzo, who had been making passive-aggressive comments towards the state of Jesse's quarters for over a year, had offered a hand.  

It wasn't like he had anything else planned on off-mission Fridays. 

"Brevity is the soul of wit?" Hanzo asked, feeling his mouth twitch into a preemptive smirk.

"Old English proverb. Woulda' thought you'd heard of it, since you've never been on the down low with the fact that you're an educated man, and such."

"Of course I know of it. Spoken first by Shakespeare, who if you'd read anything under the name of, you would see the long-winded, dialogue-heavy hypocrisy in regards to the phrase."

Hanzo let his eyes slip closed, for just a moment as Jesse chuckled, light and short.

If someone had told Hanzo Shimada four years ago that he was going to be good friends with someone like Jesse McCree, a cow-loving, true American soul with a flask of low-grade whiskey at his hip and the world's most visually-insulting hat on his head, Hanzo probably would have offed himself right then and there while he'd still had his better judgement. 

But there he was, in Jesse's tiny living room just like he'd been the week before, and the week before that, and so on. The living room that he'd been drunk in too many times to count, seen nearly a hundred movies in, and maybe cried in, once or twice.

They were almost finished. Jesse's floor and tables and counters had been cleaned, leaving behind only a few cardboard boxes that still needed to be moved to storage and a lot of dust. 

"Could you come help me with this one, doll?" Jesse asked, struggling with the last box, a larger one of a lighter color, about a foot taller than the others. Hanzo scoffed and stepped forward. He grabbed the box from Jesse's arms with ease.

"Always gotta one up me, do you?" Jesse followed.

"I can assure you it is not a conscious effort."

Jesse smiled at that, slow and mockingly bashful as he hooked two thumbs in his belt loop and let his hip jut to the side.

Hanzo stiffened. The gesture was another one of the thousands of reminders to Hanzo that he had made a terrible, horrible mistake.

He had told himself, nearly two years ago, when his unvoiced, begrudging, in-deliberate attraction was just starting to get out of control, that he would cut contact. Distance himself. It was impractical to fall in love, and it was impractical to do so silently. In hindsight, he should have just told Jesse a long time ago and stood up to the broken heart that rejection would have brought, so that he could move on with his life. But he hadn't, the coward that he was, too afraid of what it would do to the friendship that had proved itself to be surprisingly enjoyable.

So he'd tried to accept it. Accept his condition. And he had, for the most part, come to live with it, and sometimes he almost nearly forgot about it.

But then Jesse had to go and smile. He smiled a lot, too, more than any friend Hanzo'd ever had.

Hanzo shook the thoughts from his head, just as he did a dozen times a week. He took the box towards the bedroom, lifting it further in the air as not to knock over Jesse's guitar as he rounded the corner. They had been dumping all the boxes onto Jesse's bed. Hanzo didn't know what Jesse's plan was for getting them from his bed to storage, and he strongly suspected that Jesse was going to spend the next week sleeping on his couch.

Hanzo dropped the heavy weight onto Jesse's mattress. Inside, he spotted several large, thick books, all hardback. He fumbled around, curious as to what kind of heavy books Jesse would own, as the man seemed to prefer paperback novels. He found several encyclopedias which Jesse must of used growing up with a family to poor for the internet, the complete series of Calvin and Hobbes that looked like it had been passed down between more than one generation, and a bible at the very, very bottom. The King James version. 

Hanzo was about to turn away and retreat back to Jesse when he noticed a white slip of paper floating in the box, about the size of a receipt, but thicker. Upon closer inspection, Hanzo saw that it was a small envelope. Dusty. He fished it out of the box, and his blood froze when he turned it over to see the other side.

There was something written on it. The pencil was thin and faded, but it was definitely Hanzo's name and it was definitely in Jesse's handwriting.

Hanzo's eyes widened and his breath caught in his throat as a million questions came to mind. He realized, almost too late, that he had been standing in Jesse's bedroom in wonder for a least a half minute too long.

"You get lost or somethin'?" Jesse called from the living room.

"No. Just give me..." Hanzo answered, slipping the letter into a fold in his gi. It wasn't something he wanted to confront Jesse about, and McCree likely wouldn't notice the letter was gone, considering the state and location in which Hanzo had found it.

Hanzo returned to Jesse, glad that he had a face that could be set like cement to hide just about anything. 

"That was the last box." Jesse said, wiping the dust off his palms. "I know it's earlier than usual, but I didn't think I was gonna see you today, so I made an appointment with Angela to get her off my back. She's commin' over in about five minutes. Sorry, I shoulda' told you earlier."

Jesse's words momentarily didn't register, as Hanzo was still very much focused on the paper folded away in his clothing.

"Oh? That is fine. I'll leave you be." replied Hanzo as soon as he realized he was getting kicked out. It was perfect, actually. Hanzo wouldn't have been able to keep a straight face for very much longer, anyway.

"You should come to dinner tonight, though." 

Hanzo made a noise of agreement even though he never went to dinner before power walking away from the exchange. He bolted out of Jesse's quarters so fast that his vision blurred.

"Woah, alright Hanz, goodb--" Jesse started. Hanzo cut him off with the door. It was abrupt and somewhat rude, but Jesse would get over it.

Hanzo took off down the halls of Watchpoint. He nearly smashed into Angela, on her way to Jesse's place, as he turned a corner. She smiled uncertainly and he gave her a curt nod.

Hanzo wasn't sure where his feet should be taking him. Somewhere to read, obviously, and relieve his burning curiosity.

His own quarters seemed too far away. So he turned into the breakroom, found it to be unoccupied, and sat on the counter next to the coffee maker.

Hanzo tugged the paper out from its hiding spot. He examined it with as steady of hands as he could manage. It was a small, white envelope, about half the size of a standard one. He examined the writing on the outside once more, just to make absolute sure it was his name. As to what it could contain, he was at a loss.

Hanzo ripped the paper along the line of long-set glue carefully. A thin sheet of lined paper fell out, covered in messy pencil writing. Not wanting to seem too obvious, Hanzo grabbed a worn looking novel that had been left on the counter and tucked the paper into a page in the middle of the book. He began to read.

 

_Dear Hanzo Shimada,_

_I can't see myself ever digging up the courage to send you this letter, but I needed to write it anyway. I've been hiding stuff from you, stuff that I think might make me combust if I go another minute without putting into words._

_It all started back when we first met. I'm sure you knew at the time that I didn't trust you, but Genji coaxed me into being nice. Said he was worried about you being alone, and that you'd have the stamina to let yourself be if people greeted you with anything short of forgiving arms and a church choir. He gave me twenty bucks. Gave me tips, too. Told me you liked a quick mouth and a good challenge._

_Genji was (is) a good friend and you were (are) all kinds of smoking hot and my ass is shallow, so I said sure. Had a blast, too, because getting you to soften on me was a trial with a hell of a reward. A dry, smart, analytical, ~~kinda socially awkward~~ reward. What I hadn't expected was to fall head over heels until nothing was left of me but a tight ball that you probably could have bowled with_

_I realized too late that I was in love with you. We had already fallen into the comfortable rhythm of Good Friends and you'd figured out my flirtations were all bark and no bite. I tried to convince myself that it was just because you were so unbelievably gorgeous (Would the god who molded your cheekbones be up for helping me get rid of a birthmark on my butt?) that I was just infatuated, a hollow infatuation built of focused lust that would surely crumble when I got to see who you really, truly were passed the clever, vicious tongue and teasing figure. But what I found hidden under your mantle of horrible guilt and shame and ungodly suffering was a core of fiery, nearly artistic passion that still slips through whenever you get drunk enough to dance or admit to me how desperately you want to be loved, and now all I can think about is how much I want to watch the little bits of grey in your hair slowly overtake the black._

_You're tormenting me, darling. Every song's about you and whenever you fall asleep on my couch after you come over for a drink or to watch a movie it just about kills me. I'm stuck in a limbo of debilitating, bittersweet heartaches and untimely, occasionally public boners ~~for the love of god, stop stretching your back~~. When I make you smile, I reckon I ain't never wanted to kiss someone so bad and just being around you makes me feel this deep contentment that I'm just too damn stupid to put into words. I kept hoping you'd do something off-putting or unjustifiably coward-like, but you never did, and by now I've seen you handle so many different situations that I can't see my affections leaving me anytime soon, as much as it would probably be easier if they did. _

_Honestly, even though I know I don't got what it takes to send this letter, I'm going to let it get lost in my quarters in the hopes that someday, you'll find it. If you do, all I can say is that I pray you have the mercy to kill me instead of leaving my poor soul to live with the rejection. I know you ain't in love with me back, but I suspect you might like me enough to do me that, and to keep watching movies with my corpse._

_PS: I love you. I love you. Feels so good to write the words. I love, love, love you._

_-JM_

 

Along the bottom of the page was a doodle of stick figure in a stetson riding a dinosaur.

Hanzo read the letter again, wondering if his perception of reality had finally snapped as his heart pounded in his ears. He read it a third time, but the prose still remained a love letter. Hanzo snapped a picture of the text and ran it through an app in his phone, translating it into Japanese on the off chance that he had forgotten how to read English properly.  

Hanzo sat in silence, staring at the words hidden in the book in his hands. He felt no pleasure at the sight of them, as they felt too surreal to be truthful. He pinched himself, genuinely wondering if he was simply having the most vivid dream of his life.

Maybe it was true. Maybe Jesse loved him. Loved him back. Had for some time. Hanzo's chest began to swell at the idea, but he did well to tame the compromising emotion, brought on by an impossibility.

However, as he struggled to think about it rationally, Hanzo realized that all evidence pointed to it being true. Breathing became more difficult.

Hanzo sat long enough for several other agents to come by for coffee or a snack from the fridge. They all shot a double-take in the direction of his face. Hanzo wasn't sure why, but he found it far from his primary concern.

He sat for so long, at least an hour, that Jesse himself wandered into the breakroom for a late cup of coffee, sucking on one of Angela's lolly-pops.

Hanzo grabbed the book in his hands hard until his hands stopped threatening to tremble.

"Whatcha readin'?" Jesse asked, absentmindedly pushing a few buttons on the coffee maker, just a foot or so from Hanzo's body.

"Uhhh." Hanzo replied, quickly turning to a different page.

"Hitchhikers Guide?" Jesse followed, turning his head to read the cover. "Those books are classics. I used to read 'em under my desk in school. What part you at?"

Hanzo quickly scanned the page in front of him.

"They are...all penguins." he cited. What was this book?

"Oh, yeah." Jesse smiled, looking pleased. "The improbability drive. I forgot about that. What's your favorite bit so far? I gotta know."

"Ummm..." 

Jesse stared and Hanzo felt his ears turn red. He was too overwhelmed and all so suddenly, and he found himself simply opening his mouth at the man in front of him. It didn't help that Jesse's gaze was intense, and that his eyes were as much of a distraction as always.

"You..." Jesse started, a grin creeping up on the left half of his face, "look like you got somethin' to tell me."

"Oh..."

"What do you got for me, Hanzo?"

Hanzo could have sworn that Jesse leaned in an inch. One of Jesse's eyebrows raised like it did when he was about to get something he wanted.

Right at that moment, Hanzo might have plucked the lolly-pop out of Jesse's mouth and kissed him till neither of them could breath as his answer, if it had not been for two things. One, of course, that such a plan required not being a coward, and two, that he was suddenly struck with the heart-sinking realization that Jesse could have written the letter a long time ago and changed his outlook.

"I think I know what you want to tell me." Jesse followed, his eyes twinkling. Hanzo tried to make his breathing as silent as possible, as to not let Jesse hear just how shallow and quick it was.

"What?"

"You thought I forgot about the gas money you owe me. At first you reckoned you could get away with it, but now you feel bad for not remindin' me."

Hanzo breathed out, relieved and disappointed. He closed the book and set it beside himself.

"In truth, I was the one who had forgotten." Hanzo replied. "Would twenty be enough?"

"More than enough."

Hanzo searched his hip pouch to find that the only American money he had was a single fifty.

"Lemme see if I got any change." said Jesse. He fished for his wallet and wrenched out a wad of a bill that looked like it had been there for a while from the corner of the leather pocket. He unfolded the wad along deep creases until it began to resemble a twenty-dollar note.

"All I got is a Tubman." Jesse followed. Hanzo took the crumpled money and handed Jesse the fifty.

"Keep the change."

"Mighty generous a' you." 

And then Jesse was off with a smile and a quick tip of the hat that he really didn't need to be wearing in the breakroom, leaving Hanzo wondering what the fuck had just happened.

First things first, to find out when the letter was written. The task would, at the very least, distract Hanzo enough to not get too wrapped up in the circle of debilitating hope and deepening self-doubt that would undoubtedly come with too much time to think about the situation.

Hanzo opened his phone to his IM's with Genji, ignoring the seventeen unanswered messages his brother had sent over the past month. 

**> To Genji:**  
What are you doing right now? 

**> From Genji:**  
well wouldn't you like to know, you ass

**> From Genji:**  
you can't just ignore me for weeks and pretend it didn't happen

**> To Genji:**  
We spoke yesterday.

**> From Genji:**  
over the public comm! 

**> From Genji:**  
i'll have you know I am _very_ busy right now. i have a seam in my plating, that i got while covering you, by the way. if i don't get it fixed now, i don't know when torbjorn can do it

**> To Genji:**  
Come over and help me with something.

**> From Genji:**  
...

**> From Genji:**  
_Fine_

**> From Genji:**  
But you owe me

**> To Genji:**  
What do you want?

**> From Genji:**  
I want 20 dollars

**> From Genji:**  
cash

**> To Genji:**  
What would you possibly do with such a minute amount of money? 

**> From Genji:**  
i owe Angie money

**> To Genji:**  
You owe your wife money?

**> From Genji**  
she takes poker very seriously

**> From Genji:**  
give me three minutes

Hanzo walked to his own quarters in a haze. The familiar, clean scent of his room did little to clear his head. He paced aimlessly in front of the door, ignoring the view of his blue and silver decor, amplified by the open windows and afternoon sun, with the letter clutched in a death grip as he waited for Genji to arrive.

The sharp tap on the door made him spring onto his toes. After a few needed deep breaths, he reached for the nob.

Genji was missing both his upper and lower faceplates, leaving the mess of scars and strips of reinforcing metal that adorned his face perfectly visible. Hanzo winced internally at the sight.

"I truly hope this is good." Genji said, but Hanzo heard little real threat in his voice.

"Come inside, Genji."

Genji stepped forward and closed the door behind him before making a beeline for the kitchenette. Hanzo followed. Once they'd arrived, Genji pulled out a sleeve of Pocky from Hanzo's stash and sat himself on the counter, right on the cutting board, apparently not caring about crumbs on his butt. Hanzo followed, and stood facing his brother, a few feet away.

"What's the matter?" Genji said, eyeing Hanzo's stone white face. "You are like a dead man on two feet."

"Do you know anything about forensics?" Hanzo replied, ignoring the jab. "Or, do you know anyone in the field?"

Genji's hand stopped, the green tea stick frozen halfway to his mouth.

"I suppose I have a few connections. But you must give me more than that, Hanzo."

"I need to uncover the mystery of how long ago something was penned."

The words rolled easily off of Hanzo's tongue. He had forgotten how nice it felt to not need to speak English. It had been awhile, not since his last private conversation  conversation with Genji.

"Do you have a pen sample?" asked Genji, dropping the Pocky. "I can have it sent off."

Hanzo unfolded the letter, keeping it out of Genji's line of sight, and tore off a small piece near the right corner that only had the word 'anyway' written on it. He placed it in Genji's outstretched hands.

Genji examined the slip.

"Is this it?" he followed. "We will need several samples."

"Must you really?"

"Just show me the document."

Hanzo thought for a minute about methodically ripping up the paper into tiny, unreadable pieces that not even the most dedicated third grader with a glue gun could reassemble, but the idea of harming the letter stung.

Hanzo's hands shook. Genji stretched his arm forward and opened his palm.

"How badly do you want this done?" Genji asked.

"Badly." Hanzo admitted.

"Just let me see it."

"Can I request for you not to read it?"

"You can."

Hanzo groaned. Genji's eyes widened, a fraction of an inch, and his mouth made the slightest turn downwards. Hanzo's will faltered. Suddenly, he realized why Genji had arrived without faceplates; to get his way.

Already regretting his decision, Hanzo handed Genji the letter, hoping and praying that he didn't--

Genji quickly unfolded the paper. It took a second and a half before his eyes lit up with realization.

"Ohhh ho ho ho ho!" Genji giggled with nothing short of delight. Hanzo lunged forward, but it was too late. Genji twisted away from his grip. He was faster than he had been as a child.

"Hanzo, Hanzo, Haaaaaaanzo!" Genji followed, face nearly split in half with pure amusement as he dodged an onslaught of palm thrusts. 

"You back-stabbing fuck! You deamon!" Hanzo exclaimed as he tried to track Genji's movements. Just when he thought he was about to get a grab on his brother's neck, Genji leapt onto the kitchen wall and scaled it, pouncing onto a rafter.

" _I realized too late that I was in love with you._ " Genji read, in English and with a truly horrid imitation of a light drawl as he hung from a beam with an arm and a leg. " _We had already fallen into the comfortable rhythm of Good Friends and_ \--EEE!"

Genji was cut off as Hanzo climbed his own cabinets to join Genji in the maze of rafters. Hanzo hugged the wood beam and reached forward, but his little shit of a brother swung onto another joist, catching the wood with his feet.

" _I tried to convince myself that it was just because you were sooooo unbelievably gorgeous_." Genji continued, hanging upside-down as Hanzo homed in." _Yer tormentin' me, darl--_ "

Hanzo growled, but Genji slipped through his fingers.

" _Every song's 'bout you._ " giggled Genji with a faux draw of smoke and a tip from a hat that wasn't there. " _I'm stuck in a--_ "

"When I get my hands on you--" Hanzo started as Genji scurried and twirled through the rafters with ease, popping up on his left and right, always just right out of reach. Hanzo's face was twisted into a murderous glare, but he felt another element stirring below his rage. There was something so familiar about the circumstance, something that had nostalgia burning in his gut.

"... _stuck in a limbo of debilitatin', bittersweet heartaches and--_ "

"Do not think I will not kill you again, Gen--"

". _..untimely, occasionally public--_ "

"Genji!" Hanzo bellowed. He lunged into Genji mid-leap. Genji disengaged from the rafters, dropping to the ground to make his escape. Hanzo bellowed a war cry, let go of his hand-holds and landed right beside his brother. Genji may have been faster, but Hanzo was stronger and Genji had been at it for a while. Hanzo grabbed his brother by the middle, sweeped an ankle under his knees to subdue Genji's balance, and lowered him quickly and securely to the ground.

"And, scene!" Genji said as he realized he had lost the battle, defeat flashing in his eyes. Hanzo took a seat on Genji's stomach, feeling the restricted rise and fall of his brother's chest.

Suddenly, Genji started to laugh. Well, he had already been laughing, but he started to laugh harder.

"What is it now?" Hanzo asked.

"You have not sat on me in twenty-five years." Genji snickered.

Hanzo didn't smile, but his scowl started to soften.

"Ok, I'm sorry." pleaded Genji. "I am ready to discuss serious matters."

"Can you get me someone who can date the words or not?"

"Most likely. But I think I may be able to answer your question without all the trouble."

"My question?"

Genji squirmed under Hanzo's butt. Hanzo did not move.

"You wish to know when the letter was written because you want to know if he's still interested, correct?" Genji asked.

Hanzo grunted. 

"Because if that is the case," Genji continued. "I can assure you that although I am not sure when McCree crafted this particular prose, I do know that he is still sickeningly in love with you."

"How would you know that?" Hanzo barked.

"He told me."

"When?"

"Yesterday. And a week ago. And two weeks ago. And two weeks and one day ago."

Hanzo's head spun as he tried to process the information. His heart, on the other hand, had decided to start flooding his entire body with fluttering joy that was threatening to break his composure in front of his own brother. 

Jesse McCree was in love with him. His taste was questionable.

Hanzo got to his feet and dusted himself off with little success. Genji followed, and to Hanzo's relief, handed him back the letter.

"Are you certain he...feels this way?" Hanzo asked, trying to asuage his last few smidgens of doubt, not meeting Genji's eyes.

"Yes. I am not so aimlessly cruel as to lie to you about something of this matter."

Genji reseated himself on the counter and pulled the tiny bag of Pocky sticks back out. Had it not been for his brother's heavy breathing and slight smile, Hanzo might have forgotten their previous childish antics.

"Why would you not tell me?" asked Hanzo, trying to keep the pain of the last year and a half of torturous, silent, and what he thought was unrequited love out of his tone.

"Until ten minutes ago, I had assumed you two were already together."

"What? Why?"

Genji shrugged. 

"We all knew it was inevitable." he answered. "He is playful and you're stern."

"That is your sole justification?"

"You two flirt like teenagers."

"We do no such thing."

"Yes you do. None of your conversations resembled those of middle-aged, platonic male friendship's. And the _staring_. I'd figured it couldn't have taken more than a few weeks for one of you to notice the other was more pupil than man. I now see I overestimated you two, and I will adjust my expectations for the future."

Genji slipped Pocky sticks into his mouth as Hanzo walked back and forth in front of the counter in thought.

The whole thing was like a fairy-tale. So why did he suddenly feel a deep pain in the pit of his gut?

"So, are you going to ask him out, or must I do everything for you?" Genji asked.

"I'm not sure I..." Hanzo answered with realization as his chest dropped. "I do not know if I..."

"Deserve him?" Genji asked simply, and Hanzo didn't miss the eye roll.

Hanzo said nothing. Words formed on his tongue, words that had previously echoed in his mind but only for himself to hear.

"Go on." said Genji, eyes dim as he made quick circles with his hand

Hanzo was reluctant, but complied, because he owed Genji at least one.

"More so, I believe he deserves better." Hanzo started. "Perhaps he would be better off using his time to find a different lover, instead of us initiating what would surely be something unsustainable with..."

Hanzo trailed off as he realized Genji was producing a low, guttural noise, and had been since Hanzo had started his second sentence.

Genji stopped making the noise.

"Even if he wants to be with me now," Hanzo continued. "I can't see us as anything more than me whittling away at his contentedness..."

"Hrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr." Genji rumbled, getting louder. Once again, Genji stopped when Hanzo stopped speaking. Hanzo shot his brother an eye.

"...abusing his good nature, leaving us--" Hanzo tried to continue.

"HRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr."

"Genji, what is it?" Hanzo snapped.

Genji flicked his wrist dismissively.

"I thought I could stand this routine. I was wrong." Genji said with exasperated flair. "I've seen it, and I fear I will a hundred times more."

"You were the one who asked me t--"

"First you sob about how all of your failings have been solely the result of inherent character flaws, horribly self-indulgent, by the way, then you move onto the second act, composed of your depression in regards to your own 'fundamental irredeemably', then you cryyyyyy about how you have but the soul of a killer, and it is not just pitiful, it is boring and--"

"What are you off about? We have never discussed this."

"I am your brother. Your bruiting silence is a scream in my ear."

Hanzo felt his ears turn red with irritation as he considered turning his brother inside out. Hanzo vowed for the sixth time in his life to never share his emotions with anyone ever again.

"Listen to me." said Genji, a bit louder. "You've murdered some people."

"I don't care."

"Yes you do. They are dead. It's terrible. We were raised by a monster of misguided intent and corruption. But you've helped people. You've broken even on lives, at least, if the numbers are all that matters to you. And although the direction you're going would have father wincing himself to death if he knew, I am sitting before you, a living reminder of the climax of your mistakes, telling you I don't give a shit about your self-pity."

Hanzo's eyes flashed with anger.

"You have quite the nerve to speak of fath-" he started. 

"Hanzo Shimada. You are a being composed of trillions of tiny organisms, coming together to create one consciousness. Tiny organism that will not work in such harmony forever, be it from a blade or your ninety-second birthday. Perhaps, after the fact, your consciousnesses will continue in a state of eternal ecstasy. Perhaps it will not. Go out with McCree."

Hanzo was silent. Genji's features recollected themselves, and the next stick of pocky entered his mouth with poise.

"What do you and Zenyatta talk about?" Hanzo asked as his head spun, half from trying to process what Genji had said and half with the knowledge that inner peace had turned his brother into a glorified beatnik.

"The spirituality to be found in the chaotic natural of life." Genji answered. "The measures of men. The best oil to lube our joints. Sometimes he asks me to describe the taste of cheese."

Hanzo rubbed his temples.

"So. Are you going to ask him out, or must I do everything for you?" Genji asked again.

"I..." Hanzo trailed off. The idea of confronting Jesse was nothing short of terrifying.

"Do you love him?" 

"Yes."

Genji was silent. He finished the pocky, and set the ripped sleeve beside himself.

"You know." Genji started, raising an eyebrow. "You've been given quite an opportunity. You could try to break him."

"Break him?"

"Refrain from informing him you know of his feelings. Seduce him into making the first move. Takes the pressure of off you, which it seems you're all too conscious about."

Out of all the people Hanzo could have been having this conversation with, his own brother was about the last. Genji didn't seem put off by the subject matter, though, and he had already stripped Hanzo of his dignity, so there wasn't much else left to lose.

"Your suggestion seems...cruel." Hanzo replied after a moment of thought. "I will simply speak to him, like an adult."

"Suit yourself." said Genji, hopping off of the counter and homing in on the front door.

Hanzo followed him to say goodbye.

"My price." Genji said, one hand on the nob and the other stretched in front of Hanzo's eyes.

After a second of confusion, Hanzo remembered his promise to Genji. He pulled the pouch off his hip to grab the twenty Jesse had left with him.

"Wait." Hanzo said. "McCree does not drive."

"Hmm?"

"McCree does not even have a car."

"What are you talking about?"

"That charlatan!" Hanzo grunted angrily. Genji's face lit up with realization.

"His smile has emptyed all our pockets." Genji replied. "Don't beat yourself up."

It was less that Hanzo was short thirty dollars, and more that Jesse had gotten away with it.

"Alright." Hanzo followed, his voice settling. "I will humor your idea. I will break him. Make him suffer."

"Because he decieved you with something so petty?"

"If he chooses to be a scoundrel, I cannot be blamed for taking measures."

"Right. And your decision has nothing to do with the fact that you just realized if he doesn't make the first move, you would have to." Genji replied with an unbearable smirk.

Genji was promptly kicked out of Hanzo's quarters.


	2. Haircut

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about any typos. The reason this was out late was cause I have to beta myself because I could never look any of my friends in the eyes again knowing they had read my extreamly detailed, mildly-smutty novella of a soap opera

When Hanzo had first joined Overwatch, he had been happy enough to be alone.

Well, happy was the wrong word. He'd been absolutely miserable, but it was a familiar kind of miserable. His new coworkers hadn't been cruel to him, persay, hadn't cut off his testicles and left him stranded in the middle of the Sahara desert, but they were cold, as was expected. Hanzo had considered taking matters to try and change that, but the thought of constantly having to put in conscious effort to get the team to slowly trust him didn't seem worth it for the prize of getting invited to their drunken, loud outings and having to nod back at smiles in the hallways from particularly friendly members. 

So Hanzo had gotten through with a few sticks of incense, one-sided conversations initiated by Genji, a bottle of sake, and a sock for a few weeks until one day, the guy who had drunkenly tried to fight Hanzo about politics back during orientation suddenly got the gall to start standing next to him at the range or the coffee-maker, to greet him, and to ask him questions about home during battle. If Hanzo hadn't been in the middle of a group of people who loved his brother, he might have responded differently than sneering McCree down out of shock, from his Stetson to his unused spurs. 

McCree had just shrugged it off, and eventually, Hanzo stopped sneering. Even made comments back, sometimes. They were still brash and somewhat mean-spirited, but at least he was talking.

Hanzo quickly noticed that Genji seemed to like McCree. Hanzo had a faint memory of his brother mentioning he'd befriended a real American in his late Blackwatch days. That must have been McCree, as Genji found Morrison to be terribly dull. Hanzo had figured that friendship was a potential reason for why McCree paid Hanzo so much attention; to gauge if he was a danger to Genji or anyone else. Hanzo had confronted him about it. McCree had shrugged, and said, "A man can have multiple motivations."

For some reason, that had made Hanzo start to like him. Just a bit. Their comments became conversations.

Hanzo started to watch McCree talk to the other members. He was friendly and charming, occasionally outsmarting them out of chore slots or petty cash but his front seemed genuine. With Hanzo, however, he hadn't been so friendly, at least not in the traditional sense. He had been snarky and quick, didn't take any of Hanzo's shit, and didn't seem bothered to be talked down to for so long that eventually their conversations became rich with insults that were actually just jokes; passing each other sparing lines instead of stroking each other off. McCree became Jesse, at least in Hanzo's head. And eventually, Hanzo realized Jesse _was_ being friendly, just in a way specifically tailored for Hanzo. The outcome was the same. Hanzo had a friend, even if in the beginning it was just quick little conversations over cups of tea.

The first time Jesse had asked him over for a drink and movie, Hanzo had declined, as he did the second and third time. When Jesse asked a forth time, Hanzo had finally complied, overwhelmed by the state of his boredom and loneliness. Jesse gave him three shots of whiskey strong enough to knock the horse out from under a jockey, and showed him an old Western by the name of Unforgiven. Hanzo had been reluctant, because he'd secretly kind of liked Jesse's sense of style and hadn't wanted to see it ruined by a plate of cheese. 

Unforgiven had blown Hanzo's mind, especially with his expectations so low. To his surprise, Jesse didn't like movies just for their one-liners, but also for the art behind them, the endearingly heavy-handed philosophical delve into the realm of human morality which Hanzo quickly realized was a theme in the Western genera.

Not that Jesse didn't also like the one-liners. 

When they'd finished a long discussion of what they had witnessed that Hanzo was surprised to find himself having initiated, Jesse had said "You pick next week?". And then it became  _a thing._ A thing that friends did, and Hanzo couldn't help but feel a little proud that Jesse seemed to favor him, choosing Hanzo to sit by on load-outs or standing by him during mission briefings.

Somewhere along the way, two things happened. Jesse slowly, carefully started trying to convince Hanzo that maybe he didn't need to be miserable, and Hanzo realized that Jesse was handsome and that spurs were kind of hot. 

Hanzo shook the thoughts from his head and barged into Jesse's quarters without knocking.

 

~~~~

 

"So then she sticks it in her mouth, cause she's greedy. But the desert course a' the gum is broken, and she turns blue and starts blowin' up like a blueberry, because it was blueberry pie, you know? Everybody's--"

"Stop moving."

"Sorry. So everybody's losin' their shit. But this fucker, sittin' pretty off to the side just says, dead as a pan, ' _It happens every time. They all become blueberries._ '"

"This chocolate factory sounds like a lawsuit and its owner seems unfit to be around children."

"Yeah, but it was worth it, to see him fuck with the parents. That's what--"

"Stop moving."

"Sorry. But that's what made the movie so great, watchin' him pull one over the parents. Looking back, maybe he was a little too vengeful that they cheated his contest, but still. They got Gene Fucking Wilder to play him. That guy could a' killed my mama in front of me and I'd still trust him."

Hanzo didn't know who Gene Fucking Wilder was, or what Jesse was talking about, but he was content with that.

Jesse was seated on the ground, between Hanzo's legs and back against Hanzo's chest. Twenty minutes ago when Hanzo had come over unannounced and declared that Jesse needed a haircut, Jesse had happily complied. It wasn't the first time Hanzo had cut Jesse's hair, but it was the first time he had done so in such an intimate manner, with so many body parts touching and a tiny bit of extra tugging on Jesse's locks. Frustratingly, it had not yet flustered the man, with Jesse easily and innocently accepting the contact, slumping his body further into Hanzo's and letting his legs extend lazily.

In all honesty, Hanzo felt like the one who was flustered, running his hands through Jesse's soft hair, drinking in the scent of tobacco and Jesse's specific and familiar laundry detergent, all while lines from the letter that Hanzo hadn't stopped thinking about played in his head. Hanzo felt more conscious of everything, of Jesse's body language, of Jesse's voice and the warmth of their bodies, and even the questionably decorated insides of Jesse's quarters.

"Now you gotta tell me 'bout a movie your parents put you in front a' instead of gettin' a sitter." Jesse followed, bring Hanzo from his thoughts.

"I did not have the time for movies as a child. I was working to better myself."

"How often you feel the need to remind me a' that makes me think you mighta' not done the best job."

"At the very least, I learned how to clean." Hanzo replied, momentarily pausing his work to lift up a half-empty jar of peanut butter that had been on Jesse's floor for two months and had somehow managed to evade the events of yesterday's cleaning session.

"I prefer not to smell like lemons an' bleach, makes it easier to get folks to trust me. You've just got an obsession with order."

Hanzo jabbed Jesse a little harder than he needed to with the scissors.

"If I am one extremity when it comes to organization, then you are the other." he said.

"I'm sorry." replied Jesse, clearly not sorry. "I do guess you've softened on the whole bureaucracy thing since you got here."

"I was never a bureaucrat. You chose to see me as a bureaucrat. I simply find your unpredictable and occasionally loud antics to be nauseating."

"Unpredictable? I thought you said I was as unsurprisin' as a golden retriever."

Hanzo ran a hand through Jesse's hair for no reason other than his own pleasure. He had finished with everything but Jesse's bangs, and yet there he sat, carding through his completed work. Jesse didn't seem to find it suspicious, presumably assuming Hanzo was just trying to dust away cut hairs.

"I did not use those words." Hanzo replied. "But let me explain my contradiction. You have your rules, your basic, fundamental motivations, and I have seen you abide by them nearly dogmatically. However, you are unpredictable in a more petty sense; ready to drink your sorrows away or start a concert of improvised kitchen items. Now tell me, are the sides to short?"

Hanzo passed Jesse a hand mirror, and Jesse examined himself.

"Huh. Looks good. Reminds me of Blackwatch." he said. "Wasn't expectin' you to take so much off."

Hanzo had chipped away at a few inches, cleaning off the back of Jesse's neck to give him a neater look. He looked good. Hanzo stared for too long.

"Gimme the scissors." said Jesse.

Hanzo gave him the delicate, silver things before realizing that maybe it wasn't a good idea. Jesse held the mirror in a metal hand while he chopped down on his bangs with a flesh one. He didn't do the best job, but his hair wasn't in his eyes anymore. Hanzo watched, moving himself to be seated besides Jesse's left on the carpet.

"Do I get to cut your hair now?" Jesse asked, putting the mirror down.

"Absolutly not."

"Please?"

"Never."

"Come on, Shimada." Jesse pleaded. "You got that hair that looks like it's made outta silk. You can't keep it all to yourself, now, that's just cruel."

"Would you like a lock? Perhaps you could use it as a bookmark." Hanzo shot back. In hindsight, his comment had sounded more absurd than like a return of Jesse's flirtations. But what was flirting, anyway, if not making statements at risk of being grossly misinterpreted?

Maybe Hanzo was just a bad flirt. He folded his legs so that his knee brushed against Jesse's left thigh.

"You say that darndest things, sometimes." said Jesse.

Hanzo snorted.

"I say the darndest things? Don't make me laugh. Everyday I confound myself with the statements I let you get away with formulating."

"Ok, you're right. I'm a jerk. In all seriousness, though, your hair growin' out. Looks nice."

Hanzo ran a quick hand through his own hair, feeling the reward of fullness that had come from tediously growing out the shaved sides. The bits of grey on his temples stuck out, once again, no matter how hard he tried to get them to stick flat.

"You didn't like the undercut?" Hanzo asked.

"I think long hair suits you better. I've always liked the piercings, though."

Hanzo rubbed the two metal balls on either side of the bridge of his nose and clicked the metal stud in his tongue between his teeth. They were the only things left of his punk days, save for a few photos he had yet to burn.

"As long as we are ambiguously speaking fondly of each other's outer appearances," said Hanzo, "I think you look better clean shaven." 

Jesse said nothing, only straightened his face forward. Hanzo realized they no longer had any reason to be on the floor.

"You wanna watch somethin'? I know it ain't Friday, but...?" Jesse trailed off, getting to his feet. Hanzo's knee suddenly felt cold.

"I am open to the idea." Hanzo replied, following suit. "Who's turn is it?"

"You picked that French fever dream movie last. This time, we're gonna watch the first forty-five minutes of Once Upon a Time in the West twice in a row."

Hanzo made his way to Jesse's couch like he had a hundred times before. He had spent so much time on the worn, brown leather thing that he'd broken into the cushion next to where Jesse always sat. However, he found something already in his seat.

"What is that?" Hanzo asked, pointing at the plush pink rabbit he just almost sat on.

"Oh, that? D.Va gave me that. Not really sure what to do with it, to be honest."

Hanzo examined the bunny's soft looking pink fur and sickeningly large eyes. Reaching forward, he picked it up by the ankle and dangled it between two fingers, as he would have a purse or young child.

He wrinkled his nose.

"Don't care for rabbits?" asked Jesse.

"Truthfully, no. I am aware most humans seem to find the fact that they resemble nothing more than hopping balls of fur to be endearing, but I feel this only makes it all the more disorienting when all they do is copulate."

Jesse snorted.

"What is one supposed to do with such a frivilous toy?" Hanzo asked.

"I always love the little updates you give me on the stick that's still sittin' up your asshole." Jesse replied. "Plush is soft. Easier to convince to cuddle than another person."

Hanzo uncertaintly brought the plushie to his chest, with one hand on either side of it. He squeezed lightly.

"Oh." said Hanzo, finding the sensation to be surprisingly pleasant.

"What?"

"It is...nice to touch, I suppose."

Jesse grinned.

"Such softness is wasted upon the soul of a killer." Hanzo followed.

"You go on and on about your tainted soul, honey, but I reckon if you'd been born under a middle-class, suburban roof, you'd a' ended up as one a' those peaceful, city slickin' software engineers. One who goes bowling on the weekends an' everything."

"Insulting."

"I can see it. You'd always politely but firmly remind everybody to vote--"

"Please do not humor this idea further."

"Hanzo Shimada, born in the states. West Coast. 'Cept your name would be Danny--"

"The specificity you are providing in this fantasy where you strip me of my culture is undercutting any point you were trying to--"

"Danni, with an 'I'."

"You think me a man with the potential to be so trite?" Hanzo asked, chuckling the way he always did when Jesse said something strange.

"Hey, I think we all got the potential to be trite. There's a certain beauty to that. Either way, you seem to be enjoying yourself."

Hanzo looked down to see that he was squeezing the toy again, nearly hugging it.

Jesse seemed amused, per the usual when Hanzo let his guard down in front of him for a regrettable second. But this time, Hanzo looked through the smirk on Jesse's face and saw a bit of pink under his eyes, and just the tiniest shift in his stance that indicated Jesse was masking the extent of his endearment.

' _He thinks this is cute_.' Hanzo realized. He didn't really understand how Jesse thought that, but it seemed to be the case.

The plan that popped into Hanzo's head was shameful and he was suddenly hit with the hypothetical image of his parents violently disproving how their eldest son was spending the forty-first year of his life for several reasons, but Genji's previous words with him and Jesse's current eyes at him more than canceled it out.

"It's eyes are very large." Hanzo followed, giving the squishy thing another tiny squeeze.

"Jesus." Jesse replied. He broke eye contact.

"What is it?" 

"Nothin', just, never thought I'd see you so..."

Jesse trailed off and Hanzo dropped the bunny, feinting a sudden, wide-eyed rush of shame and realization.

"Oh no, you didn't have to stop." said Jesse with a bit of a plea.

"I have no time for distractions." Hanzo replied with a pursed mouth and a stern gaze. He then softened his face and followed with, "We have important films to watch and discuss."

"You want her?"

"Her?"

"The rabbit."

"Absolutely not."

"Too bad."

"What?"

"She's yours now. Her name's Bethany. Treat her right."

Jesse grinned as Hanzo picked up the bunny from the floor.

"You are a very persuasive man, Jesse, but I might just..."

Hanzo trailed off as Jesse's smile faltered and his eyebrows disappeared into his uneven bangs.

"What is it?" asked Hanzo.

"Did you just call me Jesse?"

"Had I never before?"

"No. I woulda' noticed."

Hanzo raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms. He let his hip jut out to the side, just a bit, the way he'd seen Jesse do a hundred times.

"Would you rather I not?" Hanzo asked.

"Not at all. But ain't the whole first name thing a big deal for the...uh..."

Jesse trailed off and stammered for a while, presumably trying to find a way to say his words without the risk of being distasteful. Hanzo raised his eyebrows in mock offense.

"The what?" Hanzo asked, indulging in the simple pleasure of making Jesse squirm.

"The..."

"Who?"

"Look, Hanz." Jesse groaned. "I'm on thin enough ice as it is without you pouring liqueur on it."

"I apologize." Hanzo replied, and he stiffled the urge to bow. "Just say the words."

"Thank you kindly. Point is, D.Va's made me sit through a lifetime of reverse harem anime, and in all those it makes it seem like sayin' somebody's first name is a sign a'--"

"Jesse. You are a close friend."

Jesse's lips parted in surprise. Usually, Hanzo would have resisted the itch to reach a finger under Jesse's chin and push his mouth closed, but this time, he didn't.

"Treasure those words." Hanzo continued with a smirk as his finger left Jesse's face. "You may never hear them again."

"Well, shit." 

Jesse set up the movie with the tiniest bit of a flush still under his eyes, and the smallest of smiles. Hanzo did him the liberty of pretending not to notice. Jesse would have done the same for him.

 

~~~~ 

 

Significantly later in the evening, Hanzo sat on his own couch, trying to get the charcoal in his hand to compose the perfectly curved line of a raven's back. The task, which was proving itself to call for more calculus than Hanzo had expected was a welcome distraction, but he still found his brain turning over anything and everything that had happened over the past two years that had any relation to Jesse McCree. He recognized it as a pitiful way to be spending his time, but he'd yet to find a way to keep the thoughts at bay.

Genji rushed in. Didn't even knock. At least he closed the door behind him. With a quick and smooth hand, Hanzo flipped the drawling over onto its back and out of where his brother's eyes were going to be in five seconds. Not wanting to seem suspicious, Hanzo grabbed a pen and started to scribble a list of groceries to buy the next time they went into town.

Hanzo refused to look up from his list as his brother turned the corner and closed in on the living room couch.

"Give me a..." Genji started, only to trail off. Hanzo tore his eyes away from his paper to find that Genji was eyeing him uncertainly.

"What?" Hanzo asked.

"Where you just humming?"

It was such a strange question that Hanzo wasn't quite sure how to answer.

"What do you mean?" Hanzo asked.

"You were humming." Genji replied. This time, it wasn't a question.

"I was doing no such thing."

"Yes, you did. Nothing else could have produced a tone so low."

Hanzo had no recollection of ever humming in his life, and had no idea what tune he would even pick. 

"Perhaps I was." said Hanzo, returning to his paper. "What of it?"

"I had never heard you do it before. I will drop the subject. What are you writing?"

"Your obituary."

Genji crossed his arms and scoffed.

Hanzo got off the couch to grab a cup of water. He could guess why Genji was over. Most of Hanzo prayed that Genji was not thinking of making a habit of barging in and pulling him into emasculating, gossip-filled conversations regarding their respective lives and Hanzo's shameful predicament every day.

There was, however, a small part of him that prayed Genji was going to do exactly that. A part of him that was going to the grave.

In any case, Genji was here to meddle. Which Hanzo could handle, so long as his brother didn't tell anyone else about the situation. And Hanzo at least trusted Genji enough for that. Hanzo took a sip of water from his white, stone mug and headed back to the couch.

"I told Angela about your situation." Genji said.

Water fell from Hanzo's mouth and soaked his shirt.

"She had a few ideas." Genji continued.

"Why would you inform her of something so personal?" Hanzo groaned.

"She is my wife!"

Hanzo rubbed his temples and against his own volition, started to imagine Genji informing Angela of the affair. He was able to conjure no scenario that would allow him to ever look Angela in the eyes ever again. Which was unfortunate, as he was clearly going insane.

"And it is my dignity."

"Do you wish to know what she said or not?" 

Hanzo sat down on the couch. Genji joined him. Genji placed his metal feet in Hanzo's lap. Hanzo removed them.

"Fine." Hanzo replied as his thoughts became conflicting and blood-tainted. He took another sip of water, hoping it would cool his head.

"She suggested you 'accidentally' send nudes."

The wet spot on Hanzo's shirt was refreshed.

"Angela said that?" asked Hanzo, too intrigued to be disgusted.

"She's so smart." Genji swooned.

"I would never do something so...unpolished." 

"Why wouldn't you?" 

Hanzo was so baffled that he was having this discussion with his own brother who apparently didn't even know him that well that he found himself thinking wistfully of the long mission to Anubis in a week and a half, where he wouldn't have so much time to talk, or think.

"Because I'm not a drunken, depraved fraternity boy just off the tail end of adolescence? Because I live my life with at least a minimal sense of integrity?"

"Prude."

"If someone like you didn't think me a prude, there would be cause for alarm."

Hanzo grabbed a quiver of arrows from beside himself and slung them over his shoulder.

"Now if you will excuse me," he continued, getting to his feet, "I am going to the range. But before I go, please tell me that you haven't told anyone else."

Hanzo took out an arrow and waved the sharp point.

"Of course not." Genji replied, disengaging his visor so that Hanzo could see how hurt his expression was. Like everything else his brother did, it was an over-exaggeration of a gesture.

"Thank you."

Hanzo made his way towards the door with the happy knowledge that at least everyone would still think he had decency, even if it was a hollow lie.

"I did tell Zenyatta."

Genji was promply picked up and dumped on the floor outside of Hanzo's quarters.


	3. Painting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is the dumbest thing I've ever written

Hanzo Shimada laid nearly naked across his couch, high-quality yukata untied and splayed against the red suede of the cushions. A silk towel draped over his pelvis, but Hanzo made sure the rest of himself was uncovered and tilted in full view of the painter he'd hired. His hair was down, thrown across his shoulders, and the knee closest to the inside of the couch was bent against the back support, threatening to have the towel tumbling down at any moment. Each of the muscles in his torso was half-flexed, a tedious position to hold for so long. But he managed, pulling himself in a nearly meditative state.

His living room had been cleaned, as not to distract the artist, and the place was lit only with candles that had been chosen specifically for their perfect soft orange glow.

During hour four, Genji barged in, just like the day before. And like the day before, Hanzo still wasn't sure how he felt about about it. 

Glued to his phone screen and without a glace in Hanzo's direction, Genji rushed towards the fridge and disappeared out of view. Hanzo heard the faucet turn on.

"Did you hear about Morrison?" Genji called from the kitchenette. 

"What about him?"

"He's refusing to retire again."

"Am I supposed to find that a surprise?" Hanzo asked as Genji rounded the corner with a glass of water.

"Angela did. She just lost a bet to Ana, twenty to noth--What the fuck?" Genji started, interrupting himself as he caught eye of his brother.

"Greetings." Hanzo waved, and then went back to staring forward, stone faced, eyes half-lidded, with his head cocked.

Genji glanced at the painter, a talented European man who had been in the area and in need of a few grand, his easel, and then back at Hanzo.

"I am going through with your plans." Hanzo said, amused with how he was the one making his brother uncomfortable, instead of the other way around, for once.

"Does this not seem excessive?"

"Just because a dragon loathes himself does not mean he cannot have style, Genji. You must learn this."

Genji rubbed his temples.

"And remember," Hanzo said to the painter, louder and in English. "My waist should be the focal point."

"You are insufferable when you're in a good mood." Genji said. Hanzo chuckled.

 

~~~~

 

A full day later, Hanzo Shimada laid clothed across his couch, in a lazy, unprovocative position and covered in the crumbs of his sandwhich. Twenty four hours ago, he had sent the finished painting, a polished thing bordered by flowery gold metal, straight onto Jesse's bed with a drone when the man wasn't home.

He wondered what Jesse would do. Hanzo hoped for an awkward confrontation, and spent a few minutes dreaming up ways to mess with a flustered McCree. Or maybe Jesse would just burn the evidence and pretend the whole thing had never happened. If that was the case, Hanzo planned to make innocent statements about how a package he had sent for hadn't come until Jesse combusted.

Hanzo's phone buzzed. Genji had sent him a text. Hanzo spent nearly five minutes trying to decide whether or not to look at it, let alone respond before his conscience won.

**> From Genji:**  
don't be mad

Hanzo was already done with this conversation.

**> To Genji:**  
What did you do now?

**> From Genji:**  
mccree invited me over for a hot sauce drinking contest

**> To Genji:**  
I truly hope that the parts of your life you choose to enclose with me are cherry-picked for their inanity, and are not simply an accurate sample of how you spend your time.

**> From Genji:**  
i've simply come to terms with my own inherent ridiculousness

**> From Genji:**  
to make a long story short, I was present for his reaction to his painting

**> To Genji:**  
Why would I care?

**> From Genji:**  
because I accidentally let him sweet talk me into taking the painting so that you would think it was accidentally sent to me and not him

**> From Genji:**  
I know you wanted a sweaty confrontation with him but now I just have a painting of you on my bed right now.

**> From Genji:**  
if you're wondering if it's making me extreamly uncomfortable, the answer is yes

**> To Genji:**  
The depths of your inadequacy astound me further every day.

**> From Genji:**  
at least you're insulting me again

**> From Genji:**  
do you want to know how he reacted when he saw it or not?

**> To Genji:**  
I suppose the information would do me no harm.

**> From Genji:**  
you're not acting like you want it that bad

Hanzo groaned and considered running away to live by himself in the mountains.

**> To Genji:**  
And you are not acting like someone who wants to keep his neck. What did he do?

**> From Genji:**  
he got in the shower with his clothes on

**> To Genji:**  
He did not.

**> From Genji:**  
(MMS message enclosed)

Hanzo's eyes were suddenly assaulted with a picture of a very wet, very clothed Jesse standing in his shower. His face was blurry and one of his hands was reaching forward to try to cover the camera and push Genji away, but Hanzo was quick to notice that his beard was gone.

**> To Genji:**  
Why did you take a picture?

**> From Genji:**  
extortion

**> From Genji:**  
and get this, he shaved

**> From Genji:**  
what did you do, tell him he looked better clean?

**> To Genji**  
I am content with the outcome of my plan, despite your meddling. 

**> To Genji:**  
Thank you for the information. 

**> From Genji:**  


**> To Genji:**  
Please do not do that.

 

~~~~

 

The next time Hanzo saw Jesse was just a few hours later, in the late afternoon. Genji had physically dragged Hanzo over for a cup of tea and forced him to socialize with his wife. Thankfully, after only a painfully awkward half hour of Hanzo not knowing what to say or where to look, Angela had left for a strategy meeting, leaving Hanzo, Genji, and the coffee maker alone.

Angela had not mentioned his predicament. If she had, Hanzo would have murdered Genji again, right in front of her.

"I think that went well." Genji said.

"Ask, next time. Or at the very least, warn me."

"A warning would have given you time to flee. You need to engage with someone other than me, McCree, and your own dark, circular thoughts."

Hanzo sipped his tea silently, the bitter taste kicking his senses and distracting him from his neck-ringing fantasies.

"How is he faring?" Genji asked.

Hanzo wrinkled his nose.

"You are the last person I wish to update." said Hanzo. "Stop asking."

"Last person? That's a bit insulting after we've just established the size of your pool."

"I stand by what I said."

Genji pressed a few buttons on the coffee maker. Hanzo was silent as the machine brewed his order.

"Do you want my advice?" Genji asked, messing with his cup and the liquid that was too hot for even him to drink. He hadn't even taken off his faceplates.

"On?"

"Seduction."

"No. Your fascination with the subject of a sibling's intimate life is nonsensical and...and icky."

"Talk with your tongue a lot, like this." Genji slurred. "Americans love it."

Hanzo tossed his empty paper cup at his brother.

"A heart of cruelty." Genji followed.

"My apologies. I mistook you for the waste bin."

Hanzo picked up on the sound of footsteps outside the door and flushed, just a little when Jesse walked in and made his own way over to the coffee maker.

Jesse tipped his hat at the two of them before pressing a series of buttons into the side of the machine. Hanzo caught the quick, nervous glace Jesse stole at his waist, and Hanzo made a note to be wearing the same robe he had draped over himself for the painting the next time he crossed paths with McCree.

"Thanks, sweetheart." Jesse said to the coffee maker as it finished pouring his drink.

"You shaved." Hanzo stated, unable to help himself. Jesse rubbed the side of his face with his right hand. His beard was gone, but he had kept a pattern of stubble that faded into his sideburns.

Hanzo was a fan. He should voice his preferences towards Jesse's appearance more often.

"Yeah." Jesse replied, not making eye contact. "Been meaning to."

"Why is that?" 

"Gotta...funeral...to go to." 

"Who's funeral? Or is a matter you do not wish to discuss?"

Hanzo might have been having too much fun.

"My uncle's. Don't worry, I wasn't a big fan a' him or nothin'. Just gotta pop in and pop out before anyone tries to arrest me."

Hanzo might have pushed more if Genji hadn't have been there.

"Which uncle?" asked Genji. "Your family has the breeding standards of the Oryctolagus."

"Uncle Marco." Jesse replied, straightening his features and words. "Roman Catholic fanatic on my mom's side, once got drunk offa' communion wine?"

Genji shrugged.

"You look nice." Hanzo said, for the first time in his life. Both Jesse and Genji turned to look and Hanzo immediately regretted his decision. But he kept his head up.

"Thanks." Jesse mumbled. He grabbed his coffee and retreated a few feet away to the fridge.

" _You look nice_." Genji mocked, switching back to Japanese.

"Are you envious? I will assess your appearance as well, then." Hanzo snapped back. "You look as if you were created by a doctor and a mechanic with a specific fixation regarding the most universally loathed genera of cartoon."

"You look like the angry bird from Star Fox."

"Hey, Star Fox. I know those words." Jesse cut in, minorly starling the both of then. "I used to think it was kinda rude when ya'll spoke foreign in front of me, but now I like to sit back and try to figure out what in the hell you're going about."

"Hanzo is insulting me and anime." Genji replied.

"Did he deserve it, Hanz?" asked Jesse, closing the fridge door. He took a seat at the table and placed a small, flat box in front of him. Hanzo couldn't see what was in it, but figured it was some sort of food.

Hanzo knew the look in Jesse's eye. The man had something planned.

Jesse removed the plastic lid from the box to reveal two lines of stripped orange rectangles, each rectangle about an inch and a half long.

"Is that nigiri?" Genji asked, eyeing Jesse's food hungrily.

Jesse said nothing. He looked Genji straight in the eyes, picked up a metal fork, and stabbed it through one of the pieces of sushi. Genji yelped as if the fork had entered his own side. 

Hanzo watched as Jesse brought his forkful to his mouth in one bite.

"Please stop." Genji begged as Jesse speared another piece of nigiri. Even with the plate covering his mouth, Hanzo could almost see the lines of disgust twisting on Genji's face.

"That's good." Jesse replied. "Real good. You were right Genji, I did need to expand my palette and such."

"This is blasphemy." 

Jesse ditched the fork and grabbed the next piece with his hands.

"But you know." Jesse continued, paying Genji and the chopsticks that were thrusted in his face by a metal hand no attention. "I can think of a way to make it better."

"What are you-"

Jesse reached across the table and grabbed a bottle of ketchup. Hanzo watched in amusement as Genji boiled.

"Don't!" Genji pleaded. "Please--"

"Mmmh, I sure love ketch--"

In a flash of green and grey, Genji leapt forward with his arms outstretched towards Jesse. Both Jesse and his chair hit the ground, back first.

"Did you really need attention so badly?" asked Genji as he struggled with Jesse's headlock.

"You're one to talk."

As Hanzo watched the two roll on the floor, he felt a certain envy boil in him. Nothing too severe. He had accepted that Jesse had been a better brother to Genji than Hanzo could ever be.

Still, at least Genji was happy. And it was hard to indulge on such depressing thoughts while Jesse was grinning so wide.

Genji glanced at Hanzo as he wrestled Jesse onto his back. He did a double take, and his grip on Jesse's shoulders faltered. Amidst Genji's distraction, Jesse flipped them over, but when he also turned to Hanzo, his triumphant grin faltered.

"What?" Hanzo asked, eyeing the two men gawking at him.

"You're smiling." Genji answered in awe.

Hanzo touched his face to find the corners of his mouth were turned ever-so-slightly upwards.

"It is not so much of an oddity." said Hanzo.

"In public, it sure is." Jesse replied.

Genji turned his head against the floor to look back at Jesse.

"I was not aware Hanzo smiles in private." Genji said. Hanzo reached to uncomfortably turn up his collar before realizing that he did not have one.

Jesse removed himself from Genji, and stretched his hand out to help him up.

"Hey, what me and your brother do behind closed doors ain't your business." Jesse snickered. "But I gotta bolt."

"Where are you going?" Hanzo asked, out of sheer politeness.

"I was supposed to turn in a report with Ana a half hour ago. I feel kinda bad, the sushi was supposed to be a gift for her."

Hanzo watched as Jesse picked up the food and made his way to the breakroom door.

"We will finish this later, McCree." Genji waved.

"You two and your weird eyebrows have fun, now, you hear?" said Jesse as he left. Hanzo touched his eyebrow.

Genji gave Hanzo a look. Hanzo gave the coffee maker a look.

"Do you want more advice?" Genji asked.

Hanzo left the breakroom.

 

~~~~

 

The next, next time Hanzo saw Jesse, he made sure to be in charge of the situation. 

Jesse knocked at Hanzo's front door, and Hanzo let him in. He had convinced Jesse to come over about ten minutes ago. It had been very easy.

"Jesus." Jesse said. He grabbed his hat off his back and used it to cover his eyes to the painting that Hanzo had left propped against a wall in immediate sight of entrance, image side out.

"Is something wrong?"

"Why do you...why do you have that?"

"Have what?"

Jesse gestured to the painting with a metal hand, eyes still shielded. Hanzo snatched his hat from his head.

"Oh." Hanzo followed as Jesse tried to steal his stetson back. "It ties up the place, don't you think?"

"Uh."

"I had it sent to France for the framing. I got it back a day later than intended, as it was accidentally sent to my brother, a mix up of our surnames, I assume. Was an uncomfortable realization."

Hanzo snickered internally as Jesse struggled with his own composure.

"Can we at least turn it around while I'm over?" Jesse groaned, as if he hadn't done equally ridiculous things in the past. Hanzo briefly considered saying no, but he soon found that Jesse wasn't asking as the painting was tucked out of view. 

"You've once again proven your tastes to be unsophisticated."

"Eh, stop indulgin' and explain to me why a raunchy painting of yourself is what ties up the place."

"Have you seen me?" Hanzo answered with a twisty smirk.

"You got anything to drink?" asked Jesse on the dot, widening Hanzo's grin.

Hanzo dropped Jesse hat to grab just enough sake for a few drinks worth each, wanting to stay somewhat sober. When he returned, Jesse was seated on the couch, hat in his hands, feet up on the coffee table like Hanzo always told him not to do. Hanzo sat down on the table, right next to Jesse's feet and in his total line of sight. 

"Ok. I've been meaning to ask." Jesse started as he reached for a drink. "What's your deal, Hanzo? It ain't any of my business, and it don't really matter to me what you are, but I've known you for so long and it feels strange to not know, you know?"

"Deal?"

Jesse scratched the back of his head and shrugged.

"Preference." Jesse followed.

"For?"

"You're killin' me, Hanz. Are you fucking with me? I can never tell when you're fucking with me."

"I am not." Hanzo answered, truthfully.

"Look." said Jesse, jutting his hands forward. "Men, women, neither, some complex conglomeration of the three, what is it?"

Hanzo snorted. 

"I have no preference."

"As in no preference cause you love 'em both or no preference because they're equally unappealing?"

"Jesse McCree." Hanzo said as he shook his head. "Would it surprise you to know I have, in fact, made love?"

"A little." Jesse admitted. "I always assumed that you either got no interest in what's between your legs in general, or that you'd get bored balls deep in somebody and wish you were goin' solo."

"You think I find everything to be beneath me?" 

"Can you blame me?"

Jesse smiled, teasingly so.

"What is your 'deal', McCree?" Hanzo asked, as if Jesse hadn't made it clear with quiet comments about street passersbyers since Hanzo had first met him

"Mild preference for ladies, but I ain't picky. Kurt Russel in a stetson was kinda a wake-up call for me."

"Huh." 

"What?"

"I have never thought to keep track."

"Of?"

"A preference."

"Wasn't a conscious effort." Jesse replied. "Just easy to tell the difference. You know?"

"Truthfully, only at a half. Although visually, yes, the sexes look different if specifically observed, I have never had reason to specifically observe them. I take it as not the case for you?"

"I've always thought it's wrong to hit a woman unless you have to. With that kinda outlook up my sleeve, I find it useful to sneak a peak at somebody when figurin' out how to deal with a problem." 

"Archaic."

"Oof. That stings, commin' from you."

"Well, as someone who was not raised by an unorganized group of hygienically challenged Yokels, I--"

"Ah, thanks."

"--personally have always thought females, besides a few minor differences in regards to reasoning and communication which I am not wise enough to decipher if the likes of which are natural or learned, are nothing more and nothing less than shorter males." 

"I dunno. Women seem sweeter, more worth protectin'. I'm sure you'd just tell me that thought came from the old lizard part a' my brain that knows girls got an easier time gettin' knocked up."

"I would not use any of those poorly selected words, but yes."

"See, this's why I thought you mighta' never made love before."

Hanzo felt himself smirk in amusement.

"So simply because I am more rational than you, you assume I live a life without passion?" 

"Well, not exactly without passion." Jesse answered. "I've seen you with that bow. Just not, that kinda passion."

"I can assure you I have a very passionate relationship with the palm of my hand, just as most everyone else."

Hanzo bit his tongue as he pretended not to notice the catch in Jesse's breath. 

"And as far as making love goes." Hanzo continued. "I've made my way through my fair share of teacher's assistants, secret agents, and one occasion, an assassin sent to kill me. And, I enjoyed myself. Is this really what you wish to be discussing?"

"An assassin?" asked Jesse.

If recent events had not occurred, Hanzo would have fallen for the innocence. But now, Hanzo picked up on the invitation. 

"Of a sort." Hanzo answered. "She was a mock hotel host. She initially seduced me, but I became aware of her intentions before we were finished taking care of, we will say, business. So I in turn stepped up my...negotiation tactics, until she forgot about her mission."

"So you got the upper-hand?" Jesse asked, as if he was only asking follow up questions to be polite.

"Not exactly. She, in return, became aware that I knew her intentions and stepped up her tactics as well. We ended up with a silent agreement that before the fight broke out, we would conclude our arrangement."

As Hanzo continued, he arched his back and brought his shoulder blades together in a fluid, innocent motion that came along with a chorus of cracks. Jesse's eyes flickered away.

"Several times." Hanzo continued.

He smiled with half his face and gazed off at the memory while Jesse's fingers left his hat, letting it fall into his lap. It was a smooth and well-executed gesture that Hanzo had seen Jesse preform before, but Hanzo had never thought to be suspicious until now.

The tension in the air was thick and nearly humid, so Hanzo tacked on--

"And then I stabbed her seventy-two times in the chest."

"No you didn't." Jesse snorted. "Didja?"

"No, not really. She was incapacitated and unharmed, although her purse was significantly lighter than when she arrived. Then again, so was my wallet."

"Christ." Jesse said. 

"What?"

"Didn't reckon you'd ever get so in depth about what you do when the lights go out."

"I am not ashamed. As long as you are not enjoying my words too much, I'm fine sharing."

Jesse saluted, lazy and quick, covering the guilty glint in his eyes.

Hanzo realized too late that his most recent comment had sounded more like a warning than flirtation, but in hindsight, it was probably for the better. Although the temptation to sit on Jesse's knees and tell him how obvious he was with his hat in his lap was present, that wouldn't really count as Jesse breaking, and Hanzo didn't want the confession to be tainted by his own lust.

"Ok, you ain't the only one who got a sexy story that'll make everyone feel uncomfortable." Jesse said.

"Uncomfortable, huh?"

"So I'm doin' buiness with a nice lil' lady behind the dumpster of this KFC, right?"

Hanzo snorted.

"A classic start." he replied.

"And the whole time I'm thinkin' she kinda reminds me a' someone. Took a whole three days 'til it came to me."

"And?"

"She kinda looked like my grandmother did in a bunch a' old pictures I saw. Same beauty mark and everything."

Hanzo's face twisted in disgust. 

"Hey," Jesse followed, putting his hands behind his head, "I told you we have some wild sex in the working class."

"Did you at least manage to leave with any scraps of dignity?"

"Hey now, there's no shame in what two adults do to each other behind a few trash cans. Didn't manage to leave with my wallet, though."

Jesse's tale of being robbed by a fried chicken tramp did its job in making Hanzo a lot less interested in seduction. Feeling as if he had lost some sort of mind game, Hanzo joined Jesse on the couch.

"Your turn." said Jesse. 

"I wish to rewatch Kenpei to Barabara Shibijin." Hanzo offered. "Not because it was well-crafted, but for nostalgic reasons."

"Ain't that the movie that scarred the piss outta your brother as a kid?"

Hanzo nodded. He watched as Jesse turned on a monitor and pirated the movie with a different kind of smirk.

Hanzo took a long, deep sip of sake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes for the last scene in this chapter:
> 
> 1\. McCree and Hanzo both fucked Sombra. I know you wanted me to say that Hanzo fucked Widow or Sym, but Widow would have killed him and sym is a lesbian. Be grateful I didn't have him fuck Junkrat.  
> 2\. It took an extreamly long time for me to figure out to go for 'Kenpei To Barabara Shibijin's English name or the Japanese one. The English one would have made the reference to Etoi more clear, but I couldn't see Hanzo saying that and also I shouldn't be putting references in my fanfiction anyway.  
> 3\. McCree originally said the girl he fucked behind KFC reminded him a few days later of his mother, but it was changed because my therapist says I'm too "provocative" and that I should "never show a guy on a first date Naked Lunch again that's why he thought you were weird".


	4. Range

It had been eight days since Hanzo had enlisted on his sinful, inane, and downright childish plan to break his good friend and coworker. He started by making sure Jesse saw him every day neither of them had a mission. In the past, he'd always wanted to see more of McCree. Now, he found that all he had to do was send a text that read " _Come to the Bastion's garden._ " or " _We're getting stoned and_ _you can pick the movie._ " and Jesse would be at his side with a dumb smile and the promise of extreamly enjoyable company.

Jesse's letter became his bedtime story. The page was worn with the prints of his fingers that had picked up the graphite. He found himself enjoying scheming, and the few times he ended up less than sober, found himself fantasizing of dancing and soft kisses drenched in the dim light of sunsets before he reminded himself that he was a two-hundred and ten pound, forty-one year old professional killer and not a stylistically-challenged, pubescent highschooler.

It was all somewhat overwhelming, being around the man he loved but couldn't tell, even though he knew it would give him the results they both wanted. Hanzo wished he had a friend to discuss if not the situation that he'd be too humiliated to explain, at least his recent emotional confusion. Hanzo briefly pondered over who his best friend was, before realizing that it was Jesse Goddamn McCree.

Jesse was lasting longer than he had hoped. Hanzo had no idea if he was doing a good job on his part, as Jesse's face very rarely showed indications of internal struggle against his will. If he lasted another two weeks, Hanzo would have Genji tell him.

Genji had been at Hanzo's door nearly every day, asking for updates and offering extreamly unwelcome ideas, as well as attempts to pull Hanzo into conversation regarding various aspects of their respective lives. Hanzo could not fathom why Genji cared so much about his strange dance with Jesse, as Genji's interest went passed an innocent desire for his brother to be happy. As for the conversations regarding their lives; Angela, the future of Overwatch, and political turmoil, Hanzo at first resisted, but eventually started to humor his brother a little with his own participation. Hanzo even found himself enjoying himself a little with the exchanges, although he never let them go more than a few minutes before Genji was kicked out and on one occasion, tossed out the window.

Hanzo had no idea how his plan would end, or if it would even conclude before the two week marker that Genji had too-happily agreed to. And he had no idea if Jesse was getting close to snapping. Besides a few subtle changes in his behavior when Hanzo was successful with a maneuver, Jesse's stamina for Hanzo's antics was impressive.

A few days ago, Hanzo had shot Jesse's hat off during the Anubis plan run-through, and laughed internally at the way it made Jesse half shut up for the rest of the hour. The day after, he'd dropped hints in a particularly nuanced conversation of traits he found attractive, all ones that Jesse possessed. And the one after that, he'd let Jesse catch him listening to Bob Dylan. Jesse had asked what had inspired the interest, and the look on his face when Hanzo answered "You" had Hanzo chuckling to himself all day.

Hanzo found that it was fun, shamefully thrilling to live his life knowing Jesse's eyes were on him. Hanzo made sure to spend as much time with his forearms resting across a ledge or counter-top, bent at the waist as he could manage without breaking his hips. He made sure the painting was up again every time Jesse came over. Even in public, he let his gaze linger. He found himself frowning less, which had earned many double takes from his coworkers. 

How Jesse had managed not to notice was beneath Hanzo. Despite Jesse's undeniable talents for reading people and situations, he'd been very, very dumb about the whole thing, never seeming to question Hanzo's motivations to the point where Hanzo was in awe. Then again, Jesse had managed not to notice that one of his closest friends was in love with him for the last eighteen months. At this point, Hanzo had once again considered just jumping him, but with Jesse's thick, impenetrable skull, Hanzo worried Jesse would get the wrong idea about about what he was after. And besides, the idea was as terrifying as it was inviting.

Still, it was a nice fantasy for the nights when he got a hand around himself and indulged on the thoughts that he'd kept so guiltily pushed down until now.  

Hanzo's patience was faltering. The day before the last, he'd straight up started doing yoga in front of Jesse, innocently enough in the corner of the sparing floor. McCree had just turned on his heels and left without even saying hello or goodbye. It had gotten to the point were Hanzo knew he should just give in and tell him, but he just couldn't bring himself to for reasons he didn't completely understand.

As for yesterday, Jesse had been gone, and Hanzo knew it wasn't for Overwatch. Jesse left headquarters often, to do his own work. Hanzo was always quick to cover for him, if needed, but he couldn't help but be a little put off by the fact that Jesse hadn't told him beforehand, hadn't even sent a text saying when he was going to be back.

Not that he ever had in the past, or that Hanzo had ever asked him to. Hanzo wasn't terribly worried, but the situation was a reminder of all the time he had spent and was inevitably going to spend waiting anxiously, not knowing when Jesse was getting back, or if he was even alive--

Hanzo supposed he could call. But the idea made him feel like an old-fashion, overbearing housewife, which was not an appealing thought. He'd sent a text, but it hadn't been answered.

Hanzo's arm burned, and his fingers felt nearly unresponsive as he knocked another arrow and fired it into a perfect arc, straight passed the rich green shrubbery and into the end of one of the dozens of other arrows shot into the bullseye of the target with an unsatisfying chipping sound. It fell to the ground with the distant mess of arrow parts.

He had over-practiced. In truth, he was just at the range because it was nearly three o'clock.

Hanzo heard Jesse's footsteps in the grass long before he saw him. He could hear and smell the air a dozen feet to his right shift as Jesse took a stand, facing a different set of targets, set to move along an axis. Hanzo's internal blast of relief was outlived by his aggravation.

Jesse gave Hanzo a nod. Hanzo kept his glare straight, and didn't say anything. Jesse pushed a few buttons into the panel in front of him, setting a few targets about a hundred feet in front of him to move on an unpredictable course. After that, Jesse got to practicing, knocking down his targets with ease, without ever even throwing a jab Hanzo's way. Hanzo nocked another arrow. 

As he watched Jesse work in silence, Hanzo felt himself become increasingly more annoyed every moment that Jesse continued to ignore him back.

Hanzo let his arrow fly into the center of a target Jesse was eyeing before Jesse's hand could ever touch the trigger. Jesse turned to Hanzo, eyebrow raised. Hanzo continued not to look at him. 

Jesse got back to shooting. Hanzo watched Jesse's gaze out of the corner of his eyes and hit two more targets before Jesse's bullets could reach them.

"What gives?" Jesse asked. There was no playfulness in his voice, which Hanzo found upsetting despite the fact that annoying Jesse had been his goal.

"You are taking too long." Hanzo answered, twisting his face into a sneer.

"Your own targets not enough, or do you gotta make me feel inadequate 'round the clock?"

Jesse had it all wrong. Hanzo wasn't trying to make him feel inadequate, he just wanted attention. How was Jesse not understanding that through Hanzo's zero attempts to communicate it?

"You are fragile today." Hanzo replied, making sure Jesse could see his frown.

"Yeah, I'm a bit touchy. And when you go outta your way to push my buttons, you're gonna have to face that."

Jesse was also frowning, and Hanzo hated to see it.

"What is the source of your frustration?" Hanzo asked, his curiosity and exasperation fighting together in his tone, attempting to sabotage one another.

"What's your goal here?"

"I wish to know."

Jesse continued to aim at targets as they spoke. Hanzo continued to shoot them preemptively.

"It's nothin'. Just that...oh Christ, never mind." Jesse followed, cutting himself off.

"Say the words." 

Jesse stopped trying to aim, and refused to make eye contact.

"Look, Hanzo, I..." Jesse started. The snap of his voice was suddenly replaced by something more akin to exhaustion.

"There's somethin' I want." he continued. "Something I'm not gonna get. That's it."

"What is it you want?" 

"It ain't really something I can explain."

Hanzo crossed his arms in both mock and real offense.

"Really?" he asked, cold as he could manage.

"I let you keep secrets, Hanzo." Jesse replied. The irritation was back in his voice.

"If it's causing you distress, is it not worth me knowing?"

"Keep your nose outta where it don't belong, Shimada."

Jesse only called him 'Shimada' when he was feeling exceptionally playful, or exceptionally annoyed. 

Hanzo could tell that Jesse knew he'd made a mistake as soon as the name had left his mouth. Hanzo straightened his own face, and widened his chest into as threatening of a stance as he could muster while still remaining aloof.

"I'm sorry." Jesse said, his face shifting into genuine remorse.

Hanzo said nothing. He put down his bow, and grabbed his bag. Making sure Jesse's gaze was on him, he stripped off his gi and changed into a clean shirt, enjoying a little too much and a little too sadistically how Jesse tried to unfocus his gaze without being too rapid and suspicious.

In all honesty, Hanzo wasn't fully sure why he was irritated with Jesse, or if it was even Jesse he was truly irritated with.

"What are you doing?" Jesse asked.

"Setting up to go undercover. I'm going into town."

"You never go into town."

"I am hit with a sudden taste for European decor. Something less unsightly than my current locality."

"Oh, gee. Have a grand time."

To Hanzo's dismay, Jesse was no longer sneering. He just looked sad, and the midday sunlight didn't leave out any details.

"I plan to." said Hanzo. "Perhaps I will see Europa's point, or discover why British food is universally loathed."

"We're in Spain."

"Then perhaps I will find someone to tango with."

Now Jesse was sneering, although Hanzo only got a quick glace before he turned his head away. 

Hanzo knew he was being a standoffish, infantile prick, and even more so than usual. But he was frustrated. Frustrated with Jesse for taking so long and being so stupid, sexually frustrated, romantically frustrated, and frustrated with himself for being so afraid of the change that he so desperately wanted. He heard Jesse shuffling through his pockets, and the click of a lighter followed by a familiar, bitter smell.

"You'll have better luck the more of you that's visable, and the less of you that's heard." Jesse replied, calm as the day.

Jesse's comment stung with truthfulness, but suddenly, that wasn't what was on Hanzo's mind at all.

"Yet your method seems to be vanish all together." he replied, realizing the second the words had left his lips just how revealing they were.

"Method? For w--" Jesse cut himself off. "Wait, is this about me bein' gone yesterday?"

Hanzo's chest sized-up as he turned to look Jesse dead in the eyes, out of other options.

"Maybe it is." said Hanzo.

Jesse snapped his head back towards Hanzo with eyes that looked like he had something to say, but his mouth closed when he saw Hanzo's face. To Hanzo's absolute, deepest horror, he felt his lip quiver, just a tiny bit, under Jesse's gaze. 

Hanzo pivoted a hundred and eighty degrees, knowing it was too late to hide it, and planned his escape route. Because they were outside, he would have to crawl deep into the Gibraltar forest, past Overwatch restricted lines, to escape Jesse and his longer legs.

He gave up as Jesse started to advance towards him, but he didn't turn back around.

"Hold up." said Jesse. "I figured you woulda' just thought I was off on a recon mission or somethin'."

"I know the mission line-up."

"Were you worried 'bout me, sweetheart?"

It was an untimely use of Hanzo's secret favorite pet name, and his chest swelled with two light breaths before Hanzo came to his senses and pushed it down.

"I didn't want a fight." Hanzo growled, desperately trying to undercut whatever mess this was.

"Then why'd you start one?"

Hanzo whirled back around, and looked Jesse dead in the eyes.

"Do you truly think me a man who possesses even the faintest understandings of his own emotions?" Hanzo said with a gaze ready to end the life of any bugs that happened to fly in front of his face.

A moment passed. Hanzo had no idea that what he'd said had been even remotely humorous until Jesse cracked a smile.

"That did not come out as I had wished it to." Hanzo followed as Jesse started to laugh. He did not smile back, but his facial features reset to neutral to his simultaneous relief and dismay. 

Hanzo didn't move as he felt Jesse advance further towards him. With kind, careful hands, Jesse reached forwards and placed his palms under Hanzo's forearms. Hanzo kept his gaze against the grass.

"You were worried about me." Jesse said.

"I did not assume the worse, but the worst did cross my mind as a possibility."

Jesse wrapped Hanzo in his arms with another chuckle, quieter this time. 

It wasn't uncommon for Jesse to hug people, at least by Hanzo's standards, although it was rare for him to touch Hanzo specifically unless they were both heavily sedated by alcohol, post-mission exhaustion, pain-killers, or Ana's brownie recipe. Usually when it happened, Hanzo stiffened and forced Jesse to hold a static, hard figure in his arms until he gave up, but this time, Hanzo returned it, stepping onto the balls of his feet and wrapping his arms around Jesse's neck. He was rewarded by a sensation so warm and pleasant that he had to stifle himself from groaning.

"My apologies." Hanzo muttered. "For being obtuse."

"Hey, now, you were right. I shoulda' told you I was gonna be gone. Didn't know it worried you so much."

"As I should have told you the reasons for my coldness. In hindsight, I am not sure what I thought I was going to accomplish."

With one more squeeze, Jesse let him go. Hanzo let the right corner of his mouth twist just the tiniest bit upwards to show his contentment. In truth, he had only gotten to confront a third of his frustration, but that was enough for now.

Hanzo kept his face out of Jesse's gaze, not wanting him to catch the red under his eyes. But Jesse picked up on it anyway.

"You alright there?" Jesse snickered. "Lookin' all flustered and such."

"This whole exchange was horrible stylized. I am ashamed."

Jesse laughed and Hanzo smiled through his mortification.

"Don't you worry, sugar. I got more than enough style for the two a' us."

"Walking the world as an over-exaggeration of a man does not count as style."

Jesse's arms crossed in mocking offense and Hanzo felt his second wave of relief of the day.

"Nothings wrong with dressin' like home." Jesse replied. Hanzo let his gaze travel slowly up from Jesse's spurred boots, jeans with splotches of dirt that Hanzo wouldn't have put it above the man to have acquired in a deliberate pattern, horrible belt buckle, the blue flannel that hung tight against the cup of Jesse's waist, the red bandanna that spilled from his neck, all the way to the hat that always energized onto Jesse's head the second he stepped outside. He let Jesse catch him looking, too. 

"Please." said Hanzo. "Even the movies about your home are more toned down than the way you color yourself."

Hanzo momentarily forgot how to breath as Jesse cocked his hip and shoved his thumbs into his belt loops with a smirk. Had Jesse had something to lean against, Hanzo would likely have been unable to function for the rest of the day.

"I look damn good, though. I reckon even you've noticed that." Jesse replied, and Hanzo was once again baffled at how a man who flirted as a primary method of communication didn't seem to notice when someone else was interested.

Maybe Hanzo would just have to step it up. 

"I keep my eyes on my duties and off the fronts of my coworker's trousers." he said. "I do not know if I can say the same about my present company."

If Hanzo was being perfectly honest with himself, he would have admitted that the way they were currently speaking was not too different from how they had been talking for the last year and a half, although a bit more intense with the new knowledge of each other's sexualities, at least on Jesse's part. Luckily, Hanzo was not being honest with himself.

"Well, since your eyes are clearly on your duties and you're definitely not staring me down right now, I'll tell you. I look good in a stetson."

"No one looks good in a stetson."

"Hey, you can insult me from here to hell, but keep Veronica out of this."

When Hanzo was done making a show of being disgusted, he pushed a few steps forward, close enough to Jesse to touch. Giving into the ridiculous plan he had just formulated, Hanzo plucked Jesse's hat from his head and set it on his own.

Right away, Hanzo felt overwhelmed by the smell of cigarettes as half of his vision was cut off, but it was a good kind of overwhelmed. Jesse's face twisted in pleasant surprise, and Hanzo could tell that he had thought about this exact situation before.

"You look..." Jesse started.

"What?"

"Ridiculous."

"Excuse you."

"I thought it might be kinda cute, but it really don't suit you."

"You've thought about this before?"

"Definitely a downgrade."

Jesse chuckled as Hanzo pulled off the hat and thrusted it in his face. 

"Which proves my point." Hanzo said. "No one looks good in a stetson."

"Nah, _you_ don't look good in a stetson. Just cut your losses and move on."

"My losses?"

"I've noticed you ain't too good at takin' insults, doll." said Jesse. "Learn to turn the other cheek, it'll do you wonders."

Hanzo could have sworn that Jesse's left eyebrow disappeared further into his bangs. Hanzo couldn't stop his own smirk, but he did halt himself from drifting forwards.

"What makes you think I'm the one who should be doing the turning?" Hanzo asked, and he only saw the spark behind Jesse's eyes because he was looking. "Perhaps it is everyone else's place to be beneath me." 

"You know what? I don't buy it."

"Really?"

"What can I say? In my experience, guys with aristocratic sensibilities like to be a little humbled."

"You two are dating, right?" called a voice far too close by, shaking the thoughts from Hanzo's mind. His blood boiled cold. He turned to see Hana, about twenty feet away, leaping down from the thin branches of an English ash tree. She made her way towards them.

"Nah." Jesse said, unshaken as ever. "We're too busy talkin' about anal sex."

"How long have you been in there?" asked Hanzo, significantly less collected than Jesse.

"An hour." she answered. So she had gotten here even before Hanzo.

"Why?"

"Ana paid me twenty dollars to spy on you."

Hanzo let his face turn into stone as he made a note to kill Hana later. Why Ana needed to spy on him was even more lost on Hanzo than the question of how Hana knew where they were going to be.

"Did you just betray your employer?" Jesse asked.

"You two should date." Hana stated, ignoring the question.

Hanzo took a step away from Jesse.

"Oh, don't worry, Hanz." Jesse said. "D.Va just likes it when two men kiss."

Hanzo had no idea what that meant, but it scooped some of the pressure off of himself. Hanzo watched as Hana pushed a few buttons into the same panel Jesse had been at earlier, and pulled out her pistol. There were a few twigs in her hair, and some green stains on her hands, but other than that, she looked ready for anything.

"That isn't why." Hana said, calm enough to refresh the strange respect Hanzo felt for the abrasive brat of a girl that was Hana Song.

"Then why?" Jesse asked. Hanzo whacked him in the chest.

"It would look good."

"What?"

"You two are opposites. Complementary. Guuuh!" Hana answered, rolling her eyes.

"In regards to our mannerisms?" asked Hanzo, somehow more amused than humiliated.

"Yes, but you're overthinking it." Hana answered, pointing her fingers. " _You_ are the most western, and _you_ are the most Eastern."

Hanzo couldn't help but break into the cackle of a mad man at Hana's comment, because it was the most deeply vain thing he had ever heard in his life. Jesse turned his head between the two of them until a smile broke across his face. Even Hana cracked a look of surprise at Hanzo's laughter, be it short lived and half-lidded.

After that, Hana set up a few targets and pulled the three of them into a shooting contest that she won by cheating viciously, and then dragged them into the breakroom for a snack. 

Now, as Jesse and Hana stood next to the fridge, conversing over Hana's handheld console, Hanzo realized that the whole affair, minus the spying, had been her way of asking them to "hang out". Jesse's company was high quality and in high demand and therefore asking him was a less surprising gesture on her part, but why she wanted to spend time with Hanzo wasn't clear to him.

Hanzo walked to Hana's other side to see what she was doing on her device. Hanzo looked at the screen between Hana's hands. It was a Mario game, that much Hanzo knew. 

"What game is this?" Hanzo asked, joining the conversation.

"Super Mario Odyssey." Hana answered. "I ported it on my 4DS."

Hanzo tilted forwards for a closer look. Hana was long jumping, repeatedly, into a ledge that was just slightly too high, which had the system producing an unpleasant thunking noise every few seconds.

It was a truly awful sight and sound.

"Why you keep doin' that?" asked Jesse as Hana clunked Mario into the wall with an anti-climatic smack.

"Guh." Hana groaned. "I have a capture card. This is streaming right now."

"That does nothing to explain why you are forcing my eyes upon something so deeply horrid." Hanzo replied, unable to look away.

"No one is making you look."

Hanzo glanced at Jesse.

"I'm with Hanzo on this one." said Jesse. "I reckon this is the least satisfyin' thing I've ever seen."

"That's the point. How do old guys never get this?"

Hanzo heard the footsteps of a woman nearing in on the breakroom before he saw Ana. Upon entrance, Ana waved hello to the three of them, and zeroed in on the coffee machine.

"You three better be staying out of trouble." said Ana as she pushed a few buttons on the coffee maker. Hanzo flashed back to the reason they had run into Hana in the first place.

"Wouldn't dream of it, mam." Jesse replied. Ana made her way over to their group with two small cups of coffee, one of which she handed to Jesse.

Hanzo watched as Jesse brought the cup to his nose and mouth and took a slow, methodical sip with an attentive expression.

"You know, Ana." Jesse started as he brought the cup down. "This is a damn fine cup a' coffee. I can't tell you how many cups I've had in my life, but this? This is one a' the best."

Ana snickered as she took a sip from her own cup.

"I pressed a button and handed you a cup." she replied with a grin to match Jesse's.

"An' you also paid little D.Va here to spy on us, but you didn't hear me mention it." Jesse replied.

Ana frowned, and put her open hand in front of Hana's game.

"I want my money back." Ana said.

Hana grumbled in Korean as she pulled a crumpled bill from her pocket and placed it in Ana's hand. 

"So, what brings you to these parts, mam'?" asked Jesse, and Hanzo was thankful that he was taking over the conversation.

Ana smiled, slow and calculated before she spoke.

"I need to borrow Hanzo for a moment." she answered.

Jesse and Hanzo's eyes opened wide, but Hana didn't even flinch.

"What?" Hanzo asked as Ana reached forwards and grabbed him by the ear. Twisting awkwardly to avoid pain, he locked desperate eyes with Jesse.

" _Sorry._ " Jesse mouthed with an apologetic smile. " _Best a' luck, though._ "

Hanzo flipped him off as he let Ana drag him from the room, knowing Jesse would kill him if he laid a finger on her.

"Annyeong." said Hana, offing him with a hand before returning to her screen.

 

~~~~

 

"What do you want with him?"

Ana had dragged Hanzo to her office, punched in the numbers '9457' into the door lock, given him a chair to fill, sat down at her desk with her body tilting forwards onto her elbows, and uttered the single most ominous and threatening question Hanzo had ever heard.

Hanzo still wasn't sure how this had happened. It had been a blur of silent and awkward ear pain, but at least it had been a short trip, as Ana's office was only two doors down from the breakroom.

"Who?" he asked like he needed to, even though the growing flush under his eyes was definitely giving him away.

"I'm not going to waste your time." Ana started with her eye narrowed. "You two have danced around each other for the last two long, disgusting years. A short while ago, the tone shifted. You both seem to be in relatively good moods, so I think I can guess why."

Hanzo weighed his options. Ana's office wasn't that of a violent interrogator's, but the pictures she had of her daughter and loved ones, Jesse very included, adorning the wall behind her desk made it intimidatingly clear to Hanzo where her values stood. 

"If you turn away, right now, let me leave, and never engage with me on this subject again," Hanzo started, "I will gift you with one hundred thousand yen. That is nearly a thousand in American dollars, or eight hundred euros."

Ana stared for a second, presumably trying to tell if he was being serious. Hanzo kept his face cold. But when Ana started to laugh, so much so that she nearly tipped out of her own chair, his ears started to burn. 

"No." she said between snickers. "Just listen to what I have to say."

"Twenty thousand."

"No."

"Can you not fathom how much money that is?"

"I can. But it's because you're asking so desperately that I am denying you. Learn to play better."

Hanzo blinked. 

"What did he tell you?" he asked, voice low and quiet.

"Nothing."

"What do you see to be gained from speaking with me?"

And he had thought talking to Genji about this was uncomfortable. Hanzo wondered if he kept his movements slow enough, maybe he could escape without Ana noticing.

"There's something I need to make clear." Ana said.

Hanzo nodded. He held his breath as he waited for Ana, the woman who was essentially Jesse McCree's weird mom, to continue.

"I can't ask you never to hurt him." said Ana. "That would be an impossible, unfair task. But what I can say is that you better meet the minimum when it comes to treating him the way a person should be treat--What are you doing?"

"Hmmm?"

"Stop scooting away from me."

Hanzo looked down to find Ana and her desk about a foot farther away than it had been a minute ago.

"I am not 'scooting'." he lied.

"You're still doing it."

"No."

"I can hear your chair squeaking."

Hanzo reluctantly stopped inching himself away. Ana rubbed her temples.

"Can you at least promise me that?" she asked, and Hanzo struggled to remember what they had been talking about.

"I do not wish to see him harmed."

Ana scanned Hanzo's face once again.

"Do you love him?" asked Ana, suddenly all too serious. 

Hanzo grunted.

"What was that?"

" _Yes._ " Hanzo hissed.

Ana snorted.

"What? What is it?" asked Hanzo with a bite, fed up with this meeting with the anti-Christ.

"I believe I may have misjudged your character." Ana answered. 

"Huh."

"I used to think of you as a pair of ironed, beige, monogrammed mid-thigh boxer briefs."

"And what do you see me as now?" Hanzo asked, exiting his chair.

"The same, but awkward. And kind of sweaty."

"Really."

"Yes. You are harmless."

Hanzo grunted again as he slowly backed towards the door-frame on foot, nearing in on sweet freedom, one inch at a time. He didn't need this, to be bullied by a sixty-year old woman who probably couldn't tip the scale to a hundred pounds.

"Very few would agree with that notion." he offered as a last-ditch effort.

"Despite the time I made the mistake of scoping in on you as you mercy-killed an enemy agent before digging into his insides to retrieve the flashdrive he'd swallowed, I stand by what I--"

"McCree does not know." Hanzo blurted. He stopped walking backwards, momentarily staying put in his feet, just a few feet from the door.

"Doesn't know what?"

Hanzo raised his eyebrows, and locked his gaze with hers.

"That you...?" Ana trailed off.

"Yes."

"So you two aren't--"

"Let it happen on my own terms." Hanzo growled. Ana was unfazed.

"Very well." she said, and she motioned for him to leave.

Hanzo made a beeline back for the breakroom. Upon re-entrance, Jesse handed him a cup of tea, and Hana was thankfully off her DS.

"What'd she do you for?" Jesse asked.

"She forced me to look at diagrams of my changing body." Hanzo answered, and Jesse didn't push.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's right fuckers I took your fav and I made him sweaty and awkward under the aloofness. Also in my canon his favorite movie is Naked Lunch so fuck you


	5. Alcohal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A good writer: Hanzo and McCree talked to about movies they both liked.
> 
> Me: Hanzo and McCree talked specifically about the indie, Canadian movie Cube, and specifically about how the premise of the film mutually sparked their uncertainty to what the government was really doing with their tax dollars. McCree made a joke about tax fraud that implied heavily that he was a libertarian.
> 
>  
> 
> also this chapter is way longer and darker than it needs to be so be warned

Jesse McCree was a kind man. He might have been a bit of a tease, not afraid to cheat at cards, and capable of serving a cutting remark or bullet when he felt he needed to, and also he was kind of an asshole, but he was a kind man, nonetheless.

Hanzo Shimada had always thought kindness was an empty gesture that wasted the time of both parties involved. When he'd first joined Overwatch, the way Jesse thanked and greeted everyone with more than two words, often with a smile and an empty wink that everyone but Morrison seemed to find adorable, baffled Hanzo. Jesse chattered with them, asked them questions, remembered their birthdays. He even let agents that Hanzo knew Jesse thought were dull pull him into small talk, regarding subjects so boring they would have had Hanzo laughing in the face of whoever had brought them up if it had been him instead of Jesse.

What bewildered Hanzo the most was how Jesse celebrated other's mediocrity. Jesse complementing people on their improvements, no matter how small. It made people like him, even though he hadn't really done anything that significant. In Hanzo's experience, people were only kind when they wanted something, and even if they were just genuinely warm-hearted; kindness didn't right injustices, didn't solve problems of human conflict, and only made life a mess where no one could tell who was being truthful and who was just humoring.  

Or so he had thought. But he began to notice that the people Jesse had complemented (" _You're getting better at makin' sweaters, Lena._ ") or treated with an open ear, or even flirted with, were in turn kind to others, starting a chain reaction of smiles and non-condescending conversations consisting of people willing to be patient with each other. Hanzo wasn't sure if Jesse was aware of the affect, or just had some sort of warmth tied into his spirit. Probably a bit of both.

And Jesse wasn't just a kind man, but a good man as well. He valued the life of anything with a consciousness, and wasn't afraid to push through his own self-admitted biases. He was far from afraid to kill, but when he did, it was for good reason. It was (almost) never about vengeance, unlike plenty of petty blood Hanzo had spilled, because it was (almost) never about the person Jesse was killing, but the safety of the people he loved.

So what did a guy like that want with a man like Hanzo?

Hanzo sat with his back to the outside of Jesse's door, listening to the muted singing and strumming of acoustic guitar. It was a tune he'd heard Jesse play before, when the man thought he was alone or when Ana requested for him to sing. Hanzo didn't remember what it was called, only that it was a Denver song.

Hanzo had been there for a short while. Maybe about five minutes. He had given up trying to decide if he should knock or not.

Jesse had a nice voice. He hit all the notes right and his smooth timbre served him well. Hanzo closed his eyes and waited for his favorite part of the song, the bit about trying to touch the sun. It never came.

Hanzo scrambled to keep his head from hitting the floor as the door opened out from behind him. He rushed to his feet, hoping that his face and ears showed no signs of a flush.

Jesse stood in his door-frame, in a white T-shirt and sweatpants. He had obviously rushed to put the shirt on, as it was on inside-out. He looked like he had been about to settle in for bed.

"Heard a little tappin' noise a few minutes back." Jesse said. "Wanted to know if you were still here."

"Is this a bad time?"

"In general, yes, but for you, I can make an exception."

Jesse's comment was accentuated by a tired, but a seemingly authentic smile. For whatever reason, the few inches of height Jesse had on Hanzo made it easier for him to reply with the most pathetic question a human being had ever asked.

"Why do you like me?"

Jesse stared. Hanzo was overcome with the urge to leave and reconsider his life. Maybe turn back to organized crime. At least in the Yakaza, he had never felt so pitiful.

But to his surprise, Jesse smiled and said--

"Would ya'll like a drink?" 

 

 ~~~~

 

"So, my uncle Marco's fuckin' shitfaced at his own weddin', and he's rantin' 'bout what hell is like and how we're all goin' there 'less we stop using birth control. My cousin Reggie and I sneak off to steal some cake, but we end up findin' the bottle Marco'd been drinkin' outta."

"And?"

"Fucker'd downed fourteen shots a' wood alcohol."

"No!"

"It was there on the label. Clear as day. So at that point, we were thinkin', maybe we should take out a life insurance policy, make some money off his corpse. But get this. Get this, Hanz."

"What?"

"Fucker's fuckin' fine. Finished his rant, thanked us for coming, pissed in the birdbath, and went on to live another thirty years. Didn't even go blind or nothin'."

"I don't believe it."

"Believe it. But hears the real kicker. Afterwards, my aunt Marta pulls me aside and says, ' _Jesse? Don't you ever drink a drop a' alcohol, or you're gonna end up just like that devil-bitin' excuse of a man._ '"

"And what did you say."

"' _Yes, mam'._ " Jesse answered, his voice raising nearly an octave.

Hanzo couldn't remember the last time he had laughed so deeply, and certainly hadn't remembered just how euphoric the sensation was. He was forced to grasp the rear cushions of Jesse's couch to keep from falling to the floor.

"Your family seems..." Hanzo started, "large."

"Well, yeah. You gotta tell me a story 'bout your family, now."

Hanzo stared at Jesse's flushed cheeks while he thought. Thinking back on it, every event he could recall was tainted with either blood or gratuitous amounts of passive-aggressive comments.

"You have already heard my tales of Genji," Hanzo replied, "and I cannot think of anything humorous or with a warm ending that involves anyone else."

"Tell me one anyway."

"Can the story be but a series of complains regarding my mother's treatment of me?"

"Abso-fuckin-lutely."

Any other time, Hanzo wouldn't have bothered Jesse with his sob stories. But after having downed enough alcohol to kill a lesser man, Hanzo found himself more open minded.

"Well..." Hanzo trailed off, counting on his fingers. "There was the time when I was seven, she refused to speak to me for several days after I requested help with my broken finger during archery practice,"

"Organized crime mothers are always so warm."

"...there was the time when I was nine, she refused to speak to me for several days for crying while being taught how to properly handle a specific tongue-related interrogation device,"

"Jesus."

"...there was the time when I was twelve, she refused to speak to me for several days after I let Genji convince me to stay out past curfew,"

"I'm noticing a theme."

"...and there was the time when I was sixteen, she was somehow informed of the fact that I had been deflowered by our house maid, and--"

"You lost your virginity to a--never mind, continue."

"Guess what my mother did. Guess."

"I dunno, Hanz, did she refuse to speak to you for several day?"

Hanzo giggled and tapped Jesse twice on the nose.

"Wow." Jesse replied. "She sounds like a card."

Hanzo was momentarily envious of Jesse's childhood. His early years seemed full of adventure and meaningful moments without rules and the constant threat of punishment. Not to say Jesse's childhood wasn't undeniably full of financial hardships and mentors who were horrendously unready to be mentors and one or two murders, but he seemed to have lived with a certain freedom and like a _child_.

"Whenever I picture you small," Hanzo started, wincing at himself for being so revealing, "I can only imagine you in detention."

Jesse chuckled.

"Spend my fair share a' time in detention. Made my way through some teacher's box of detective novels in there. Better than juvy."

"Why were you sent?" asked Hanzo, strangely thrilled by the idea.

"The works. Spitballs, skippin' classes, reading under my desk, reading on top a' my desk..."

Hanzo couldn't imagine having done anything that would have even put him at minimal risk of organized punishment during primary school. The threat of his parents, to be looked upon poorly by the teachers and students, it all seemed like too much.

"...impersonatin' a teacher, taking the lords name in vain, tryin' to start a religion. One time, I stole some keys offa' janitor and let a cow in to roam the halls."

"That is..." Hanzo started.

"What?"

"Scandalous."

Jesse started to shake with laughter the moment he caught sight of how wide and serious Hanzo's eyes were.

"I always suspected you were a problematic child." Hanzo continued. "But I had never thought you were quiet so..."

"Stop trailin' off, I wanna know."

"You describe yourself as a local psychologist's job security."

Jesse chuckled, and then faltered.

"I wish." he said. "Dad wasn't too keen on shrinks. He enforced his own kind a' therapy. I won't get too far into what that was."

Hanzo took a long, slow sip of whiskey so that Jesse couldn't see his frown. Jesse reached for the bottle when Hanzo was done.

"Have I told you 'bout my dad?" Jesse slurred. "And I don't mean Reyes."

"You have made serval ill comments."

"Aww, now. That ain't fair of me. You woulda' liked my dad. He was a real big fan a' the Japanese."

Jesse set the whiskey down. Hanzo kept frowning.

"Does it feel good to not be what they wanted us to be?" asked Hanzo.

"For me, yeah. For you and your folks, I reckon it's a bit more complicated."

"Careful that your prying words don't lose you another arm." Hanzo said, even though Jesse was right.

"Ain't one for bein' too careful. And I got a question." 

"What is it?"  

"Look, lord knows I've speculated about you as a tiny little archer, but I gotta hear it from your mouth." Jesse started, a bit quieter. "What was your childhood like, 'sides the quiet mother? I got some ideas, but it's all just guessin'."

Hanzo sifted through a thousand ways to describe it before settling.

"I was honored as the smartest, swiftest, and strongest when I succeeded. But when I did not, my parents did well to turn their eyes away, as to not be burdened by the shame of my failings."

Jesse face twisted slowly from surprise to what looked like disgust for a moment before it settled.

"Damn." he finally said. "I don't quite know what to say."

"We will save it for another drink." Hanzo followed, placing his legs in Jesse's lap. 

"Woah." Jesse flinched. "Hello there." 

"I am drunk. And I wish to be loved."

Jesse's mouth fell open. Hanzo chuckled, suddenly giddy.

"You tryin' to tell me you're in dire need a' physical contact? You? _No_." said Jesse, his face softening.

Jesse snaked a hand around Hanzo's back and pulled him closer, nearly into his lap. Hanzo melted into his companion with the grace of a drunk donkey covered in grease, and buried his head into Jesse's chest. He turned his eyes and let Jesse's warm torso and strong heart beat become his whole world.

Jesse's right hand came to rest on Hanzo's hair tie. He pushed forwards, tentatively, and then more confidently when Hanzo hummed in approval. Hanzo continued to hum, very quietly as Jesse pulled at the ribbon, spilling Hanzo's hair down to tickle his own shoulders. Jesse threaded his hand through the curtain of ink.

Hanzo stiffed a louder noise. Jesse had never done this, but Hanzo had always wanted him to.

Jesse's hand petted deeper, rubbing behind his ears and tugging at strands until everything was so overwhelmingly pleasant that Hanzo couldn't breath.

Actually couldn't breath. It was too much. The pure, loving flesh hand in his hair and the metal one on his back, the knowledge that if he were to confess this could be something he could have all the time, it was overwhelming. Hanzo was enjoying it too much, more than any man should in front of another person, especially one who was so--

"What did you say?" Jesse asked. Hanzo hadn't realized he was mumbling, and couldn't have said what language it had been in.

'I don't, I do not..." Hanzo trailed off. He tightened his eyes.

Jesse loosened his grip on Hanzo's shoulder and removed his hand from his hair.

"I'll take it you want me to stop?" he asked carefully. Hanzo grabbed Jesse's arms hard to keep his hands from shaking. Hanzo knew the tonal shift was abrupt, and that it was his own fault.

"Too much pleasure. I do not..."

"Too much pleasure?"

"You are too good to me. Too kind. It is wasted."

"No, it ain't wasted."

"I loath myself, for having the audacity to ask and accept your affection, when I know any kindness is wasted on me."

Hanzo surprised himself with his own words. He recognized them as irrational, and overly cruel to himself. And yet, he still did not completely think they were lies.

Jesse took what Hanzo would have called a risk, tightening Hanzo back into his lap. Hanzo could feel lips pressing against the top of his head, and suddenly felt overly conscious with the realization that it was the first time Jesse's mouth had touched any part of him.

"You wanna know what I fuckin' think, Hanz?"

"What?"

"I think you should trust my goddamn judgement, that's what I think."

"Hmmph." Hanzo grumbled.

"And do you know what I reckon?"

"No, but I am sure you will soon inform me."

"I reckon I'd eat my own boot if I ever met somebody who made so well with the shittiest end of the world's fanciest stick anyone ever saw."

"You speak as though I am a victim." said Hanzo. "I can assure you, that is not the case."

Jesse snorted, a surprisingly rough sound to hear from him.

"What is it?" Hanzo asked.

Jesse sucked in a breath. Hanzo had heard that breath before. It was the breath Jesse drank in when he was about to form a series of words that would make Hanzo feel better about himself.

"I got one more somethin' to say." said Jesse.

"No." Hanzo replied, burying his face into Jesse's chest again until he could nearly taste the thread pattern of the man's flannel.

"Huh?"

"Your words make me feel loved. Just let me loath myself in peace."

"Alright, I'm just gonna mosey right on past that red flag and tell you that the whole victim thing you're stuck on is bullshit."

Hanzo was silent as he contemplated how Jesse was possibly going to convince him of this one.

"You ever heard the sayin' 'Judge not lest ye be judged'?" Jesse asked.

"Yes."

"Actually, I just realized I got no damn idea what it means. Forget I said that, I'm gonna start over from scratch."

Hanzo scoffed, but waited patiently for Jesse to recollect his drunken, idiot self.

"Ok, I think I figured it out." Jesse started. "You ain't just a victim, but you ain't not a victim either. Nobody's one or the other, 'specially not guys born into the goddamn Yakuza."

"Perhaps."

"Life's just a buncha' different scenarios with a different villain every time. That don't mean you don't gotta watch people and try to kill 'em a little sometimes, but--"

Jesse cut himself off with a hiccup before continuing.

"I'm drunk, Hanz, you get what I'm sayin'?"

In truth, Hanzo did. What Jesse had said made rational sense. In response, Hanzo felt his mind threatening to do something terrible and horrible, like process his guilt and learn to forgive himself so that he could move on with his life and become a better person, so he quickly drowned it out with the reminder that even if he hadn't been a perpetrator in a few points in his life, the people who's lives had been cut short by the pull of his bow or the long-forgotten sword--

' _Hrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr._ ' said a little voice in the back of Hanzo's mind, pushing away the thought. 

"Yes." Hanzo said, pulling his head up and accentuating his statement with a roll of his eyes. "Although the notion seems a bit complicated for your truly insufferable sense of righteousness."

"Well, if I'm bein' honest, you're parta' the reason I started thinking what I just said."

"It is encouraging that this particular philosophy has a sample size of one."

Jesse's grin nearly split his face. Hanzo raised an eyebrow, and then realized that he had been staring. And that Jesse had been staring back.

"Was that sarcasm I just heard outta you, sugar?" asked Jesse through his unbearably adorable smile. He reached for the whiskey.

"What of it?" Hanzo asked back. He turned to meet Jesse's gaze.

"You never..." 

A moment passed. Jesse kept staring, not finishing his sentence. 

"I never what?"

"Huh? Oh, sorry, got distracted. You got big, beautiful doe eyes. I'm gonna be honest, I got no idea what we were even talkin' about."

Jesse's comment was topped with a swig of whiskey, half of which that ended up in his mouth. The tips of Hanzo's ears started to sting. He touched his right eyelid uncertainly.

"Well." Jesse continued, spilling more whiskey. "When you're surprised."

"I didn't think you noticed." Hanzo mumbled.

"That you got eyes that could strip a man's gaze away from all the stars in the sky?"

Hanzo replied by turning his head back into Jesse's chest, choking a little on his own spit. Jesse snickered.

"We got a mission tomorrow." Jesse followed, changing the subject.

"I assumed it was half the reason we are drunk."

"You ready?"

"I am relived, to be truthful. I grow tired of thinking about what is not in front of me."

"Tired little philosofer. I wish I felt the same. To be honest, I..."

"What?"

Hanzo felt Jesse's body shrug.

"I'm still kinda hung up on all the dead from our last big mission." Jesse admitted. "I know it ain't doing anybody no good thinkin' about it, but I still do."

"It does you good, to process it. Take it from me; an unprocessed kill may haunt you less in the present, but it will come back to claw through your dreams."

Jesse said nothing, and instead tangled a finger through Hanzo's hair again, even more timidly this time. Hanzo pushed his head into Jesse's hand, and McCree began to stroke.

"Thought you said compassion had no place on the battlefield." Jesse replied.

"And we are not on the battlefield." 

Jesse chuckled at that. 

"Who did you kill?" asked Hanzo.

"Only two, that I knew of. I try to just knock 'em out, when it's just troops. A fella on Genji's tail, and a lady bullying Ana. I don't like to shoot...well, you already know."

"And what about on your little vacation a few days back?"

"Just one." Jesse answered. "And not a man I'll be loosin' sleep over, and not just because I bought a new blanket with the money."

Hanzo chuckled. 

"Why would that be?" he asked.

"Cause he was a monster?"

"How can you be sure?"

"He ran a child labor camp? Tossed over UNCAT law like it was a half finished pancake? Where are you goin' with this, Hanz?""

"Still, monster seems unfair." Hanzo replied with a smirk. "No one is simply just a monster, or simply not one. Life is just a conglomeration of different scenarios with a different perpetrator every--"

"Oh, fuck off."

Hanzo joined Jesse in a laugh. A certain contentedness boiled in his chest, and Hanzo was too drunk to push out the sensation.

"Do you trust Overwatch?" Hanzo asked once they had finished.

Jesse was silent for a few long seconds. 

"For now, but that ain't likely to always be the case. There's been somethin' I've been meaning to ask you, Hanz."

Hanzo pulled away from Jesse's chest to get a look at his face. He had a suspicion as to what Jesse was going to ask him, in regards to the ever-changing political climate.

"I don't know how much longer Overwatch is gonna be around." Jesse started, features uncharacteristically serious. "And I don't always know if I'm gonna stand for the same stuff they stand for, you know? Organizations change."

"Where are you going with this?"

"If something were to happen, or we got disbanded, I want..."

"Just ask." Hanzo pleaded.

"I want you to come with me."

Hanzo let the silence sift over both of them as he pretended to think about it.

"I ain't askin' you to elope, or anything." Jesse continued, less bravery present in his voice. "I want Ana and Genji and most anybody else who needs a family. But I want you there. Even if we aren't friends anymore when it happens, even if we're on other sides of the globe--"

"It would be my honor." Hanzo replied, tumbling out of Jesse's lap and onto his feet. 

"Woah now, you sure? That's kind of a big thing to ask someon--"

Jesse yelped as Hanzo manhandled a hand on his back and another on his knees. Hanzo pulled Jesse into the air, bridal style, and spun him around once, twice, three times.

"Shit Hanz, I kinda just asked a lot. You don't gotta decide now." Jesse snickered.

"Would be my honor."

"You sure? I could be leavin' Overwatch for any number a' reasons. Political disagreement, that maybe we see differently on--"

"My honor."

Hanzo brought them both back to the couch in a tangled mess, the alcohol delaying the pain of a harsh landing. This time, Jesse was in his lap. 

"It sounds like you are the one who is uncertain." Hanzo said once he could speak again.

"Nah, I'm pretty sure. I don't wanna be alone anymore."

Jesse's smile was softer now. His eyes were bright, and made no effort to leave Hanzo's face. How Hanzo managed not to kiss him, the alcohol and everything working against him, was nothing short of a miracle.

Hanzo let his own smile falter. And when he spoke again, he made sure his tone was serious.

"There is something else you wish to tell me." Hanzo stated. It wasn't a question.

Jesse frowned, and rubbed the back of his head.

"Actually, yeah." Jesse started. "There's somethin' else I've been kickin' around for a while, trying to figure out the right time to say."

Jesse looked away. Hanzo's could feel his own heartbeat in the tips of his fingers.

"Look, Hanz, I don't know if you feel this way 'bout me but," Jesse continued, "but you're my best friend, and I ain't just sayin' that cause I'm wasted."

Hanzo's mouth tightened at the idiot who was Jesse McCree.

"Oh god, sorry if that ain't ok." said Jesse with wide eyes, gazing at Hanzo's unamused expression.

"Of course it's ok, you idiot." Hanzo replied. "You are also my best friend. I thought you knew. Don't waist my time."

Jesse grinned a stupid grin, and Hanzo called him an idiot once again.

"Is that what you were going to tell me?" Hanzo followed, hoping, praying that he would just say--

"I wanna, uh, I want you to know my real name."

After a split second of disappointment, Hanzo's eyes widened. From the first time he had seen Jesse McCree's name and face in the pages of his _Recent History of American Crime_ textbook, way back in college, he'd assumed it wasn't the man's given name. But even after their friendship bloomed, he hadn't thought he would ever learn the truth. In all honesty, he'd never felt it was any of his concern, and the man in front of him would always be 'Jesse' to him.

But there was something rousing about the idea of knowing.

"Are you certain?" Hanzo asked. His voice cracked.

"Positive."

Jesse tucked his head into Hanzo's neck, and got next to his ear. Hanzo had to force his heart rate down as Jesse whispered a first name very, very quietly. Hanzo didn't ask for the last.

Jesse pulled away with half-lidded eyes and the most genuine smile Hanzo could remember having ever had seen. Hanzo tugged Jesse back down into his chest. It wasn't a great fit with Jesse's extra height, but Hanzo was just fine with that.

"Don't tell nobody." said the man formally known as Jesse.

"It is safe."

Hanzo happily traced a hand through Jesse's soft hair, carding behind his temples as the name Jesse had whispered played over and over again in Hanzo's ears. Hanzo's fingers twitched with mild curiosity as they rolled over a line all the way across back of Jesse's ear, where it met his skull. The line felt like scar tissue, and Hanzo ran the pad of his finger over it a few times to examine it closer.

"What's this?" Hanzo asked as his finger moved.

"Old scar. Didn't finish a job. Fella wasn't too happy about it, figured it was worth one a' my ears."

Hanzo's upper body winced.

"But I got it back." Jesse continued. "Wrapped it in some ice and tin foil, gave it to Ana to stick back on."

"I did not press for details out of courtesy to you. At least return the favor by not presenting them."

Hanzo's comment had been slanted like a jab, but unbeknownst to his company, his face twisted into a wide-eyed frown. He pulled Jesse closer, tightening his grip into a near protective hold as he realized just how mistreated Jesse had been, his whole life.

"Aww, you worried about me, sugar?" Jesse said. "There ain't no need. I reckon god must love me. Every time I do a summersalt, he reloads my gun."

"That is enough alcohol." Hanzo replied, ignoring Jesse's nonsensical statement as he grabbed the bottle. He carefully pushed Jesse out of his lap and put the bottle back in the kitchen. When he returned, Jesse was sprawled across the couch on his stomach, head pushed into one of the cushy armrests.

No longer giving a shit about anything, Hanzo lifted Jesse's head, worked his way under it, and placed Jesse's brow against his thighs.

"Just where I wanted to be." Jesse said, muffled by Hanzo's lap. His voice was rough with exhaustion.

"Really?"

Jesse said nothing, just turned on his side and nuzzled his face into Hanzo's stomach. Hanzo let his own arms fall against Jesse's body.

"Uncouth." Hanzo said.

"Hanz?"

"Yes?"

Hanzo felt Jesse yawn. His body relaxed as Hanzo stroked the hair behind his available ear, one more time. 

"Do you remember a few days ago when we watched Alien, and you jumped at the chest burstin' scene?"

"I try not to."

"I thought it was real cute."

"I know, Jesse. Is there anything else you wish to tell me?"

Jesse snored.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the ear thing was origonally going to be an arm thing, but then i worriedhow he lost his arm would be revealed and i would look like a dumdum for being wrong so I stole the ear thing from Firefly


	6. Anubis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter doesn't serve the plot at all but I'm weak for team as (weird) family.
> 
> Also nvm _this_ chapter is the dumbest thing ive ever written

 " _Come on Hanzo, come on Hanz._ "

Words cut through the silence. What they meant or who had said them, Hanzo didn't know. The world was a color that only wasps could see. 

" _Come on Hanz, you gotta breath._ "

Hanzo heard himself drink in a deep breath. The darkness spun and flickered as Hanzo remembered how to open his eyes.

He immediately closed them. Too much work, too tired. He did, however, hear a few loud sighs of relief, and felt a sensation that suspiciously resembled his pants and boots being stripped off.

"Hhhha." Hanzo heard himself breath.

" _He's breathing._ " the voice said again, and Hanzo recognized the timbre as Jesse. " _He opened his eyes._ "

" _He's conscious, but barely._ " said what sounded like Angela's voice. " _But he should be fine. We have him._ "

Hanzo felt a dull, pressing sensation against his mouth and caught the brief smell of blood and tobacco. His eyes flickered open once more, but nothing made sense and trying to focus made his brain hurt.

With a grunt that sounded like Jesse and another that sounded like Ana, Hanzo suddenly felt weightless. He was being carried, or at least that seemed like the most logical explanation. Hanzo stopped trying to think.

" _Why is he so heavy?"_ someone grumbled.

Once the movement stopped, he wrenched his eyelids open again, needing to understand what was happening.

His vision was fuzzy, but he could make out a few people standing over him. His chest was sore. His whole body was sore, but his chest especially, implying someone had been beating at it.

"Yumi." Hanzo muttered, his fingers twitching for his bow.

" _We have your bow._ " said another voice.

Suddenly, he remembered. They were stationed in Anubis. They had been for nearly a week, with little sleep and little real food. He had been searching for a place to take a leak when all hell broke loose. His last fragments of memory were of crawling under a remains of a broken building on his forearms to collect two small, unhygienic children and an incredibly fat cat, pushing them out into Angela's outstretched hands, and then the remains of the structure collapsing.

Jesse, Genji, Angela, and Ana were present. Jesse was at his side, Genji was standing over him, and Ana was grabbing onto his hand. Angela was unhooking a few tubes from his nose that Hanzo didn't have the medical experience to understand the significance of. Everyone was dusty and smiling like idiots, and they were all tucked away into a small mud structure that kept the sun out nicely.

Hanzo's first instinct was to feel extreamly self-conscious.

Jesse was laughing, giddy and light. Genji's faceplates were removed, uncovering his smile. Hanzo pretended not to notice the clean, wet streaks across his brother's dirty, naked face.

"How long?" asked Hanzo.

"A minute or two." Genji answered.

Angela walked forward and pressed a metal staff to his head. Hanzo gave her a question glace.

"Healing your concussion." Angela replied. "Unless you awoke with a craving to be at risk of permanent brain damage?"

Hanzo said nothing, but sighed as his head started to hurt a lot less.

"Ah, the wonders of modern medicine." Angela said. She stepped back, and Genji stepped forwards.

"McCree smooched you." said Genji, tapping Hanzo's side with his foot. So that's what the tobacco smell had been from.

"Oh." Hanzo replied as he covered up the catch in his voice.

"What?" Jesse bickered, turning to Genji. "You ain't never kissed a friend who could've died?" 

Genji mumbled and rubbed the back of his head.

"But if that don't convince you..." Jesse said as he stepped towards Genji.

Jesse kissed a snickering Genji straight on his dirty, bloody mouth.

"Seven years later and you still taste like soot." said Genji as Jesse pulled away.

Usually, Hanzo was put off by reminders of his brother's and McCree's previous "nontraditional" friendship, and how shameless they were about not keeping it a secret, but at the moment he only found it amusing. Angela stepped forwards and grabbed Jesse by the back of his collar.

"Hands off." Angela said, her persisting smile undercutting the threat.

Jesse turned to face her, put a hand on between her shoulder blades, and tipped her back. Hanzo heard a very quiet "may I?", followed by a giggle and a quick but stylistic kiss. This time, it was Genji who grabbed Jesse by the scruff of his neck.

"Kiss me, Ana." Jesse pleaded as he happily spun from Genji's hold. "It's all I've ever wanted."

Ana wrinkled her nose.

"Too young. I'd rather kiss Hanzo." she replied, leaning over.

"That isn't ness--" Hanzo started, only to be cut off as Ana kissed him.

After that, Angela had to kiss him, and then Ana again. Hanzo accepted his fate, too tired to mind and somewhat endeared for reasons he couldn't truly understand.

"That is enough of that." said Hanzo, pushing away Genji's mouth with two fingers before it could move any closer to his own.

Everyone was in a strangely good mood, all things considered. He supposed it was because they "cared about him", or whatever.

Hanzo moved his perception into his body, checking for damages. He found that although his gi was his own, all that was covering his legs was a pair of boxers that certainly weren't the trousers he had arrived with.

"What happened to my pants?" Hanzo asked, sure that Genji was to blame.

Ana snorted, and started to laugh.

"Well...uh..." Jesse trailed off, rubbing the back of his head and looking away. 

"What it is?"

"The dragon peed himself." Genji answered, his voice breaking in amusement.

Hanzo groaned the groan of a defeated man. He considered reaching a hand up to cover his face, but found even the thought to be physically exhausting.

"It happens." Angela said kindly, making things a hundred times worse. Still laughing, Ana pointed a finger and nearly fell over.

"Made you seem more human." said Jesse, audibly on the edge of a giggle.

"Is the mission over?" Hanzo asked, wanting desperately to change the subject.

"One last wave." Ana answered. "And then we can go home and take a nice, week-long break."

Everyone let out a longing sigh.

Hanzo got to aching feet. He examined the standard boxers he was wearing, and tried not to wonder who had put them there.

" _He's looking at your legs_." Genji said in Japanese. Hanzo flipped him off, but caught Jesse's gaze flutter away from his lower body when Hanzo turned to him.

"Who's are these?" Hanzo asked, pointing at the underwear.

"Morrison's." Genji answered with a snicker. "Ana had to give him twenty bucks."

"It was worth it. He's going commando now." Ana followed, and everyone grinned.

"Do we have any extra pants, or will I have to fight talon in my commanding officer's undergarments?" Hanzo asked.

"Take mine." Ana offered, slipping out of her leggings. She held them outright.

"Upon reevaluation, I believe I can manage without." 

"Do you mind wearing clothing from a fallen soldier?" asked Genji.

"Not especially."

Genji tossed Hanzo a pair of standard black male combat pants. Hanzo slipped them on, snarling at how they clashed with his gi.

"Keep these ones dry." Genji snickered.

Hanzo lunged forwards and pinched a spot on the back of Genji's neck, the only debilitating nerve ending his brother had left. 

"Yurushite. Kanben, kanben!" Genji pleaded as he twisted.

Morrison's voice came over all their comms, interrupting their antics and informing them that they had about a minute before hell hit.

"But I'm so tired." Angela sighed, summing it up for everyone.

Hanzo groaned again. He felt far from motivated with his heavy feet and screaming limbs. The last stretch was always the hardest, having spent all of his adrenilin until he was forced to push through the pain on his own will alone.

"What about Hanzo?" Jesse asked into his comm.

" _He's got five minutes to rest. Ziegler, you watch over him. Ana, you're with me and the other Shimada. McCree, you better be ready for a left flank. You're with Lucio._ " said Jack.

"Ya'll gonna be alright?" Jesse asked, turning to Angela and Hanzo. "Lookin' mighty t--"

" _And I swear to fucking god, McCree, if you and that kid try to start another cultural revolution, it's gonna be all your asses on the line._ "

Hanzo was too tired to stifle his smile when Jesse tightened his hand into a tunnel and pulled against the air in front of his belt as he slipped out of sight. Ana and Genji left next, leaving Hanzo very unfortunately alone with Angela in a room that was getting smaller by the second.

Hanzo leaned against the wall. Angela eyed him suspiciously, and slowly started to make her way towards him. Hanzo's brain started to produce a dull, uncomfortable tone that increased in volume the closer Angela got. Hanzo flashed back to his "Angela said to send nudes" conversation with Genji.

"How are you feeling?" Angela asked.

"I have been better."

Angela reached for a gash on Hanzo's forearm that Hanzo hadn't even noticed. He hadn't remembered getting it, and doubted he'd been conscious for the affair.

"May I?" she asked, giving him the illusion of a choice. 

Hanzo let his arm fall into Angela's delicate hands. He looked away as she worked, but was glad it was her patching him up and not Ana, who did the cauterizing first and the painkillers later. Angela, however, never left a scar, and there was never any pain. Hanzo even found himself enjoying the careful, warm touch of her hands, at least until she started to talk.

"I have not told anyone." said Angela. The dull tone started to play again.

"What?" Hanzo asked, immediately regretting playing dumb, wishing that he had just said nothing.

"Him."

"Thank you."

Hanzo prayed that the conversation would end there. Angela must have noticed how tense his arm was getting.

She started to say something else, but to Hanzo's immense relief, a voice from their comms interrupted whatever she was saying.

" _Jack shat the bed on his flanking call, made it too late._ " Jesse yelled. " _We got crossroaded before we could mosey on by, and now we got all the shoot's on our tails. Not to be an asshole, but if we wanna stay above the snakes, we're gonna need a couple more lead pushers._ "

Hanzo spoke his agreement into his comm and jumped for his bow. He turned to see Angela eyeing him uncertainly.

"Did you get any of that?" Angela asked, and Hanzo realized she hadn't understood.

"Morrison made the wrong call. By the time they arrived in position, Talon's troops had regrouped and are now both a danger and pushing. McCree needs back-up if he wishes to live, and although he did not state it directly, he implied that he does."

Angela gave Hanzo a look, but Hanzo's mind was elsewhere.

 

~~~~

 

They had been successful. Talon had been chased out, and Overwatch hadn't lost a soul or even a limb. 

Hanzo had thought he was tired before, but that had been nothing compared to now. Exhausted mentally and physically, hungry, and in desperate need of a bath, he crawled back to the mud building he had woken up in, just a few hours ago. His heat tracker had informed him that Jesse was located inside, and it seemed like a good place to wait for the drop ship.

Hanzo wormed through the empty doorway, delighted by the drop in temperature. Jesse was tucked against the wall, and the only one preasent. His hat was covering his eyes and his chest plate was resting beside him. He was shirtless, presumably because of the heat. Hanzo was less warm, as he had spent most of his time up high and around cover, but Jesse had spend the last few hours running around, soaking up the sun. Angela had taken every chance she had over the last week to spray him down with sunscreen.

"Howdy." Jesse said, his fingers twitching in a minimal greeting.

Hanzo said nothing, but crawled forwards until he was seated next to Jesse, the cool orange clay against his back and Jesse's warmth against his right side. He leaned into his companion, too tired to support himself. Hanzo closed his eyes and hummed in delight when Jesse shifted his weight to drape his serape around the both of them.

"Yeah, 'm tired too." Jesse said, and coughed a little cloud of dust. 

Jesse was covered in soot, sand, and dried sweat, he smelled bitter and salty and too much like the tobacco he was chewing, and Hanzo couldn't have been more comfortable.

"Lemonade." said Hanzo.

"Huh?"

"Cold lemonade."

"What about it?"

"Sliced fruit."

Jesse smiled with realization. 

"Poptarts." Jesse offered.

"Mochi."

"Cold beer."

Hanzo let out a noise that had before only ever escaped his lips after a particularly good meeting with his hand in the shower. Jesse chuckled, dry and weary but full of amusement.

"Showers." Hanzo said.

"Couches."

"Sleeping." 

"My tooth."

"What?" Hanzo asked. He turned to Jesse to find him making a pained face. Jesse reached into his mouth, and Hanzo heard a bloody crunch.

Jesse pulled the stray tooth out of his mouth and put it in his pocket.

"Angie el' put it back in." Jesse said. 

Hanzo turned Jesse's face with fingers on his chin, and wiped a drop of blood from Jesse's lower lip in concern.

"I'm sorry I kissed you, Hanz." Jesse followed.

"Oh? I had forgotten." Hanzo lied. "I didn't assume you intended it to have value."

Jesse was silent for a moment. Hanzo held his breath.

"Well, I wouldn't say that." said Jesse. "Was real fuckin' worried 'bout you making it, even though I shoulda' known it was far from somethin' we couldn't handle. Take it as a symbol of my gratitude for the continuation of your existence."

Hanzo snickered. There was something sweet about it, to think that Jesse's first instinct was to kiss him, covered in urine or not.

"I have been kissed and touched by more people today than I have been in the last decade." he admitted. "And yet, I cannot say I truly mind."

Before Jesse could respond, Hanzo turned his head and pressed a kiss to Jesse's cheek, the warm scruff welcome over his mouth. Jesse's stubble had grown out over the mission. Hanzo, on the other hand, had kept his own at bay and refused to tell anyone how.

"Well them." Jesse said, and Hanzo smiled at the smooch mark of soot he had left.

"Face towels."

"Liqueur."

Hanzo nodded his head in lazy agreement.

"Marijuana." he replied.

Jesse snickered and handed him a joint and a lighter from a pants pocket.

"Where did you get this?" Hanzo asked. Narcotics, no matter how mild, weren't allowed on missions. Hanzo and Jesse both got away with their respective flasks, but they had mutually run dry day two. 

"I stole it from a corpse. Don't tell Jack."

The weed was dry, covered in blood, and low quality, but it still managed to make everything warm around the edges.

Jesse watched with delight as Hanzo sucked in his cheeks and blew out a delicate ring of smoke. The circle floated above their heads, widening for a few seconds before getting sucked away into the breeze. 

"You'd make a good hobbit." Jesse said, and Hanzo had no idea what that meant.

He pushed his head into Jesse's shoulder. They were such wrecks that McCree probably wouldn't take it as anything special, as this wasn't the first time they had borderline snuggled post long mission.

"Soap." Hanzo murmured.

"Clean underwear."

"My underwear."

Hanzo's thought process was interrupted as Ana limped into the hut. She ignored Jesse's greetings, and fell into their outstretched legs. She wasn't wearing pants again, but Hanzo didn't blame her. She curled into a ball, and Jesse put a hand over her shoulder.

"Mam." Jesse greeted.

"Give me some." Ana said, reaching for the weed.

"Thought you said smoking was wrong." said Jesse, and Hanzo handed her the blunt.

"No, I said smoking cigarettes was bad. How are the patches going?"

"Pretty ok. Is it safe to lick 'em?"

Ana smacked him upside the head as best she could in her position in their laps. Jesse snapped his fingers, but produced no sound.

"Gravy." he said.

"Ice." Hanzo replied.

"Blankets."

"Pillows."

"Masturbation." Ana offered.

Hanzo turned his nose down.

"What? Don't you two pretend like you don't." she followed.

"I think about you when I do, Ana." said Jesse, and Ana smacked him again.

Eventually, Genji and Angela walked in and threw themselves against the pile, although Angela did snatch the joint out of Ana's mouth. Lucio and Hana were next, until they were a mess of dirt and sweat of so much human contact they might as well have been European.

Hanzo was pushed even closer to Jesse. Lucio was granted access to the middle of the pile, as his injuries had been the most servere. His dirty, hippy feet ended up far too close to Hanzo's nads.

"You doin' alright there, parder?" Jesse asked him. "Bit dirty and sweaty for a prince type."

"There is something meditative about sitting in filth." 

Truthfully, the contact was nice. Hanzo wrapped an arm around his sleeping brother, too tired to feel guilty when Genji's tired, scared face came to rest on his other shoulder.

"Still, first time I've seen you take part of a post-mission cuddle pile." Jesse said.

"I was not given a choice." 

"Got me there."

Hanzo had never been one for finding things cute, but Jesse's face was so adorable at that moment that Hanzo just about broke it and confessed there, had it not been for the dual forces of cowardice and a lack of privacy.

"You're less of a priss that you were when you first got here. Been a long few years." Jesse followed with another grin, so dusty and genuine that Hanzo didn't even try not to smile back.  

"Well, I no longer feel as often that someone is watching me." 

"Yeah? Affects a' that shame-based parenting finally rubbin' off?"

"At the same speed as the impact of your, should I say, minimalist upbringing."

Jesse and Hanzo chuckled heavy enough to shake the bodies around them.

"One of us." Lucio said, and then he coughed. Hanzo had thought everyone was asleep, and he supposed he should feel self-conscious that everyone could hear their conversation.

"You hear that, Hanz?" Jesse mumbled in the voice of someone who was about to fall asleep. "You're onna' us now. Onna' the dirty, common folk. Rent a flat 'bove a shop, cut your hair and get a job, smoke some--"

"You guys smell really bad." Hana said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy shit, this has only been out for a day but someone already drew the "I'm so happy you're alive" kiss scence (minus the urine). You can check out the picture and their tumblr [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RV0Tcxw1oE)


	7. Birthday p.1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DISCLAIMER: the rest of this hasn't been double read through, only read through once, but I wanted to get it out before a super long car trip so sorry typos ahead

It had been an hour, and Hanzo still had no idea why he was at this party. No one would tell him what or who it was for. He wasn't even completely sure how he had arrived. He remembered getting to his quarters after the drop-ship had landed, showering off the Anubis sand, blood, and dirt, and sleeping for two days. As soon as Hanzo had woken up, Jesse had been at his door to drag him off. Hanzo had been too tired to resist.

He was seated on the couch in the breakroom, against Jesse's left, and much more awake. The room was too small to comfortably fit everyone. The couch, only made to sit four people or one Reinhardt, was overflowing and Genji's expressive manor of speaking and acting was pushing Hanzo farther into McCree, who Hanzo was having an increasingly hard time keeping his eyes off of.

Jesse's midsection twisted in a detracting maneuver as he brought his cigarette to his mouth and took a hit, drawling the smoke in and letting it out in a calculated stream. One of his caves was resting on the coffee table and the other was bent against Hanzo, who was currently realizing for the umpteenth time just how long Jesse legs were, and how the curve of his thighs--

Hanzo turned his gaze away. Angela huffed by and snatched the cigarette from Jesse's mouth.

"You can't smoke in here." she said. "And this time, you aren't going to trick me into giving it back."

"Can't win 'em all." Jesse replied, and he seemed unaffected. Hanzo refused to meet Angela's gaze as she left.

Hanzo looked to Jesse once again, moving his gaze across Jesse's contently set cheekbones, lingering down to the tiny dip in his waist, and back up again to bright eyes.

"What?" Jesse asked.

"Hmm?"

"You keep lookin' at me."

"What of it?"

"Nothin'. I mean, if you wanna longer glance, you can just ask." said Jesse, a little lower and with a deliberate douse of extra butter. Hanzo struggled to tear his gaze from Jesse's smirk as he adjusted his yakata.

"You Americans, with your empty flirtation and poor infrastructure." Hanzo replied, shaking his head with an identicle smirk.

"You know what? That's fair."

' _Flirt back._ ' a little voice in Hanzo's head begged. 

Hit with an sudden desire of something he'd wanted to do for a long time, Hanzo reached his left hand towards Jesse's cybernetic arm. He turned not only his head to do so, but his shoulders as well, squaring himself with Jesse. Hanzo grimaced as Genji's expressive elbow hit him right between the shoulder blades.

"My apologies for rapidly changing the subject," Hanzo started, "but may I?"

"May you what?"

Hanzo let a finger trace across the crook of Jesse's wrist.

"I have always been curious." Hanzo answered.

"Knock yourself out." Jesse replied, his smirk fading into something more genuine.

Hanzo let the pads of his fingers glide over the cold metal, examining the divots and joins of the prosthetic. He'd always been somewhat fascinated by Jesse's arm, even before Jesse had started using it as a tool to try to convince Hanzo that advanced technology wasn't inherently the scum of the earth.

"Can you feel with it?" Hanzo asked. "I realize now that despite all this time, I do not know.

"Yeah. Not as intensly as the one god gave me, but it don't feel pain, so that's pretty neat."

"It's beautiful." Hanzo said, and he didn't catch the wonder in his own voice until after the words had already been formed.

"Beautiful, huh?"

"Well crafted. A pleasure to examine."

"Not too pricey these days either." said Jesse with glint of something indistinguishable. "I reckon it costed less than your nose, Shimada."

Hanzo grinned as he formulated the perfect counter to Jesse's jab.

"My mother claimed my original made me appear hawkish." Hanzo replied, and snickered as he watched Jesse's happy face melt into one of sadness in under a second.

"Cruel." Jesse mocked, spreading out his fingers as Hanzo traced the palm of his hand.

"She was."

"You drunk?"

"Not a drop."

"Glad to hear it. You'd be best to stay away from jazz and liqueur, darlin'."

Jesse's statement was punctuated by a sharp raise in his eyebrows that Hanzo didn't miss. Hanzo shot him back a look to match that struggled to display the unreadable line between suggestive and incredibly condescending.

"You shaved again." said Hanzo, moving his fingers from Jesse's arm to poke the man's lightly-stubbled cheek.

"What of it?"

"Your uncle must be having a very long funeral."

"Like damn sure hell he is. You ever been to a Catholic mass?"

Hanzo scoffed as Jesse grinned at his own pathetic cover-up. Hanzo vowed to step up his game, although the task seemed hard on a full bladder.

"I'm going to the bathroom." Hanzo said. And he did.

Hanzo tried and failed to collect himself in the mirror. There was something different, visually, about the man looking back at him, and Hanzo couldn't place what it was until he touched his face. As he brought his finger up from the corner of his lips, past the line of scruff to his cheek bones, he realized what was different.

He had the beginnings of a laugh line. Barely deep enough to see and unlikely to be found by someone who didn't know his face as well as he did, but definitely there and moreso, definitely was not there a year ago. 

Hanzo scowled. The lines went away, and more familar ones took their place.

When Hanzo returned, Hana had taken his seat. She was showing Jesse something on her phone. Jesse looked perturbed, and Hanzo caught a bit of their conversation as he returned.

"...D.Va, I know that there's some sorta ironic and absurd value that keeps you lookin' at this stuff, or a fascination with the bounds a' human imagination, but I'm old. I just don't wanna see a doodle of Waluigi gettin' rammed up the ass by--Oh, hey Hanzo."

Seeing that he was back, Hana left her spot on the couch and gestured for Hanzo to take it back if he wanted.

"What is that?" Hanzo asked, pointing at Hana's phone, completely unsure as to what Jesse had been going on about.

Hana thrusted her phone screen into Hanzo's face and Hanzo saw something he would never be able to truly comprehend. He sat down with wide eyes, and the outline of what he had just witnessed drew itself on the backs of his eyes every time he blinked.

Hanzo took a sip of the closest beer in sight.

"You ok there, darlin'?" Jesse asked as Hana ran off to traumatize someone else.

"There is much I do not yet understand about human nature." 

Another thirty minutes passed. Hanzo kept waiting for someone to make an announcement that it was someone's birthday, or an important Overwatch anniversary. But none came, and Hanzo was forced to watch his idiot coworkers and their drunk decisions with no explanation. 

Hanzo turned into Jesse's ear.

"We could have more fun at my place with a few drinks." Hanzo said, and he didn't follow with more details.

"You know, doll, I've been meanin' to say. Your banter's been getting mighty strange lately."

"A bold move."

"Huh?"

"Admitting that you think what we do is banter."

Jesse head turned into the conversation, just as Hanzo had wanted it to.

"And why would that be?" Jesse asked with a slanted tone and eyebrow.

"You are confessing to me that you believe yourself to be keeping up. That is not a sentiment one would wish to be wrong about." Hanzo answered. The boastfulness of his implications were an act. In truth, Hanzo always worried he was the one who couldn't keep up. Hanzo had only even begun thinking for himself very recently, while Jesse was obviously clever enough to have been doing it since he could toddle.

"In English? I'm confident that I'm holdin' my own. But I reckon you could put a foot on my back and wipe the floor clean with me if I was the one speakin' my second language."

"Your confidence is wasted. Although English is a horrid, unsalvageable train-wreck of a deeply unorganized language, I have studied its intricacies in more depth than you ever will."

"Guess you're right." Jesse replied, pausing for another sip of his beer. "I never even finished eleventh grade."

"Humble of you to share."

"Hey now. I may not be a genius but they did pull me outta kin'ergrarden a few times to do those tests, with the sixteen cubes, you know?"

"No, but I suspect that happened for a very different reason than you would like to think."

Like always when he could get away with it, Hanzo's eyes slipped shut as Jesse laughed.

"We are both fools." Hanzo followed. "But my offer still stands."

"What offer?"

"To be somewhere other than here."

Jesse shook his head. 

"This party's important." Jesse claimed.

"And yet still no one tells me what it's for."

Hanzo tipped further back into the cushions as Jesse leaned over his lap and into Genji's space.

"Hey Genji." Jesse said a little louder. "Hanzo wants to know what the occation is."

Genji sprung up from his conversation with Fareeha so quickly that Hanzo swore he could hear a piston or two firing. 

"Happy birthday!" Genji shouted, and the room silenced before chattering in agreement. Hanzo reluctantly joined them until he noticed everyone was staring in his direction. He looked behind himself to see no one.

"What?" he asked, violently uncomfortable.

"Happy birthday!" Genji shouted again, in Hanzo's direction. Hanzo pointed at himself. Genji nodded.

"What day is it?" Hanzo asked. His only tracker for how many days had gone by was counting back to finding Jesse's letter. He had given up on even knowing what month it was anymore.

"'Bout fifteen thousand since you first saw the light a' day." Jesse answered.

"You're fourty-two!" Genji yelled, too much drink apparent in his voice.

Hanzo wasn't sure where to look with all the eyes pressing against him. Glancing away wasn't an option, but the threat of locking with a pair made him wish it was.

Hanzo kept his eyes on the ceiling next to Ana's head as Reinhardt gave a production of a speech that Hanzo would have to ask for a transcript of later, as his mind was unable to fully process what was going on. 

The next thirty minutes were pure torture. Nearly everyone had to give him a few words or tell an anecdote. Hanzo felt all too conscious of his own face and what it was doing. So he set it in stone, and tried to turn the corners of his mouth up at appropriate times. Had his coworkers not been showing such unadulterated compassion towards him, Hanzo would have given into the urge to loudly announce that he was bored with the conversation and go stand by himself in the corner.

They made him blow out _candles_.  

Mei handed him a card. Hanzo opened it, and winced as half a cup of gold glitter poured out into his lap. The card featured a drawling of a snowman that kind of sort of looked like Hanzo and the horrible phrase "You're the _ice_ -ing on the cake!"

Doctor Zhou was not a good artist and Hanzo fought back another flinch. Jesse gave his side the tiniest of nudges with his elbow. Hanzo tried as hard as possible to not let Mei notice that he had just thrown up in his mouth a little bit as she gazed at him expectantly.

"Thank you, Doctor Zhou." Hanzo said with the lightest smile he could manage without feeling embarrassed. "Your kindness in a single moment exceeds that of what I often see in a cycle of the moon."

To his surprise, Hanzo felt a strange, new sort of delight when Mei giggled and reached for a hug. He did, however, stay stiff in her arms. She didn't seem to mind.

"Huh, that was pretty good." Jesse said once Mei had left Hanzo's head spinning.

"I will give you a guess who I learned it from."

"In my defense, they're pretty cute when you get to know 'em."

"That is the most deeply conceited thing I've ever heard. "

"Hey, I'll give you a guess what I learnt it from."

Hanzo scoffed.

"Reminds me..." Jesse followed, in a lighter tone. He lifted his butt from his seat. With a bit of shuffling, Jesse reached for his back pocket.

"I, uh, stole you some stuff." he said.

"You did not have--"

"Don't waste your breath."

Hanzo's eyes were wide as Jesse handed him what looked like a small, thin book. Hanzo eyed the front cover.

"Futoshiki." Hanzo read as he realized the book was full of number puzzles.

"I noticed you liked to do 'em when Jack's giving speeches, and that you like paper ones, rather than screens. I don't know if it's the exact kind you usually do, but--"

"It's not, but that is a good thing. Thank you." Hanzo cut in, speaking the truth. A new type of puzzle meant new rules to learn, and new rules to find. It was such a successful, personalized gift that Hanzo nearly closed the six inches of space between their mouths, once and for all.

"Oh, and..." Jesse said as he reached into his pocket again. "This."

Jesse handed Hanzo sleek pencil. 

"I know you like drawin' those birds, and you mentioned you were runnin' outta charcoal, so..."

Hanzo examined the pencil. It was high-end, made for professional sketches; perfect for drawling delicate lines, and soft and dark enough to be smeared the way he liked. But what Hanzo found the most intriguing was the adornment of pink cherry blossoms painted against the side of the small thing.

Hanzo was going to have a hard time sharpening it.

"It is--" Hanzo stuttered. "You are--"

"You don't gotta say anything."

"Thank you."

"I ain't sure I'm the one you should be thanking." 

Hanzo slipped the pencil into his hip pouch along with the book of puzzles and Mei's card.

"Genji." Hanzo called into the crowd. Genji appeared at his side, nearly immediately.

"Yes?" Genji replied, panting a little bit.

"Did you do this?" asked Hanzo, moving his hand around the room. Is was an empty question. No one else knew his birthday.

"McCree helped."

Jesse snorted.

"Nah, Genji did all the work and planning." Jesse said. "I just had to trick you into coming."

Hanzo turned to his brother.

"I offer my thanks to you." he said.

"Fear not." Genji replied. "For I will not forget that you owe me."

And with that, Genji was off, leaving Hanzo with a strange feeling of incompletion. Hanzo turned once again to Jesse, but he was interrupted by yet another visitor. 

Ana was advancing on the two of them. Hanzo turned his gaze towards her boots, and prayed that she didn't have something planned. Luckily, she ignored Hanzo, and grabbed Jesse by the shoulder.

"Sing for us." she ordered, loud enough for others to turn away from their respective conversations.

"No, I couldn't." Jesse replied.

"Don't make me ask again."

"I gotta sore throat."

Jesse smiled as other voices of insistence started to mix with Ana's.

"I couldn't." Jesse repeated. "Hanzo, do you mind if I do?"

"Not at all." Hanzo answered.

It was truthful. Hanzo was more than happy to have the attention off of himself.

"Then it's settled." said Ana.

"I'd love to. But," Jesse protested as Ana pulled him up, "I just remembered that my tongue got cut out this morning."

Jesse was pushed to the center of the room and given a chair and the guitar that he had just happened to have brought with him

"I couldn't." Jesse said again. He sat in the chair and pulled the guitar into position, with the body tucked over his knee like it was an animal he loved.

"Play the one with--" Ana started, but she was interrupted with too many voices yelling out song names, a variety of country-western and classic rock artists, and chunks of lyrics from tunes they couldn't remember the names to.

"If ya'll insist." said Jesse through his smile as his fingers started to move. 

He ended up playing them all. Hanzo wasn't surprised, as the group had done this at all of the two and a half other social gatherings Hanzo had been forced to attend.

It had been a while since Hanzo had caught the entirety of one of Jesse's songs. He stuck to his spot on the couch besides Fareeha and Angela without a frown while Jesse sang, and he didn't turn his gaze away for the seconds Jesse caught him staring.

Hanzo thought Jesse's singing voice was slightly less exceptional than his speaking voice, but that was _not_ because it was unimpressive. His voice lacked the minute, fine tunings of professional training, but it was smooth and deliberate with experience. His fingers moved across the frets of his instrument fluidly, never needing a readjustment, and Hanzo found himself speculating where Jesse had learned the songs and to play.

In all honesty, Hanzo could tell that the room would have loved it even if Jesse wasn't good, because of the way he held himself when he was the center of attention. He encouraged them to sing along to the parts that they knew, which had Hanzo longing for the parts that they didn't.

At least they were enjoying themselves.

Hanzo's eyes slipped closed as Jesse concluded his last request, a story of a man unable to pay his exit toll, forever stuck on the trains of Boston. People clapped when he was done, and Jesse pretended to be bashful.

Ana was in the middle of trying to make Jesse bow when Genji walked forwards and whispered something into Jesse's ear that made a long, slow smile break across his face.

"Actually." said Jesse. "Would ya'll mind an encore?"

The room made it apparent that they would not mind an encore.

"Gottcha." Jesse followed. "But I've been thinkin'. It's Hanzo's birthday, and I don't want to steal all his thunder."

With his eyes locked on Hanzo, Jesse patted the air besides his chair. All of the blood rushed out of Hanzo's face as he shook his head no.

Hanzo continued to shake his head no as Jesse started to make his way towards the couch. Fareeha and Angela moved from their spots, and Jesse took a seat next to Hanzo. Hanzo scooted as far away as possible on the couch as he could.

"I love you two and your strange, aesthetically pleasing friendship!" Reinhardt bellowed, and everyone but Morrison snickered, who put in ear plugs and pretended to be asleep.

"You ready, Hanzo?" Jesse asked, apparently out of his mind.

Jesse began to strum as Hanzo's wide eyes tried to find someone, anyone to save him, but his coworkers were all too amused to offer any sympathy. Hanzo couldn't recognize the folksy, swung chord progression, but as soon as Ana heard it, she covered her grin with a hand. 

" _Sometimes...it's hard, to be a woman._ " sung Jesse.

Everyone lost their shit. Hanzo stared Genji down as he shook his head hard enough to crack his neck.

" _Givin' all your love, to just one man._ " Jesse continued with his tongue in his cheek.

Everyone wheezed, and Jesse was forced to play louder to keep up. Hanzo hid his face in his hands, not sure if he was hiding the red on his cheeks or the fact that he had cracked the smallest of smiles. He blushed further when he realized he was being serenaded, even if it was mockingly so, and the tips of his ears betrayed him.

" _You'll have bad times, and he'll have good times, doin' things you don't_ \--"

Keeping one hand over his face, Hanzo lunged sideways and pinched a nerve cluster under Jesse's forearm. Jesse's playing faltered as he swore and tensed, and Hanzo was free.

Unfortunately, everyone was still staring at him.

"Self-defense." Hanzo stated, and for the first time in his life, he experienced the simple pleasure of making an entire room of people laugh. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> add me on battle net my name is IWantGarrusFromMassAffectToRamMyAss42069
> 
> If you play junkrat or moira in death match don't @ me


	8. Birthday p.2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter starts where the last one left off. It has no business being two chapters, cept that I didn't want it to be two long.
> 
> Also for this chapter to make sense you might have to remember every line of dialog I've written so far sorry

After that, things started to calm down. Hanzo helped a snickering Jesse up, and Jesse let Hanzo go without finishing the rest of his terrible song. Jesse drifted away as Hanzo returned to the couch, and Angela pulled out some poker chips.

Hanzo turned his gaze to his brother, suddenly remembering the whisper Genji had made in Jesse's ear, and that everything had been his doing. From what Hanzo could tell, his brother was in a good mood. Genji had always been much better at socializing with others, even during his snap-backs and parachute pants phase.

Hanzo pondered over an old Christmas eve memory with his brother. At two in the morning, Genji had barged into Hanzo's room--

Hanzo's eyes snapped open with a sudden realization. He downed the rest of what had been Jesse's beer.

Locking eyes with Genji, Hanzo beckoned him over. Genji nodded. But before Genji could reach him, Hanzo made his way out into the hallway, and leaned against the side of the door-frame outside of the breakroom. Genji followed him, and Hanzo shut the noise in behind them.

"What is it?" Genji asked. He disengaged his faceplates to sip the frilly drink he had brought with him.

Hanzo examined his brother's face. The deep pink scars, the metal supports that framed his jaw and composed his chin and bottom lip, the angry orange burn splashed across his cheek that would never go away, and the bright smile that reached all the way to Genji's eyes.

"We are in need of a confrontation." answered Hanzo, and Genji's grin faltered.

Hanzo had spend enough time baffled over the past few weeks by his brother's strange, meddling, undying interest in his love life. But now, Hanzo realized that it was embarrassing how long it had taken him to figure out the source of Genji's behavior.

"Have you been using whatever this..." Hanzo started, gesturing with his wrists, "is with McCree and I as an excuse for..."

Hanzo stopped speaking, not wanting to shame his brother.

"For your attention? Yes." Genji replied.

Genji eyed him with uncertainty.

Not sure if he was forcing himself or giving in, Hanzo fell into Genji's body in some sort of embrace. Genji's arms moved to wrap around Hanzo's shoulders. Hanzo couldn't bring himself to lift his own arms, but he felt welcome resting against his brother's cold, metal body.

"Also," Genji continued, "I wanted to make you uncomfortable."

"Which I deserve. I have not been a good brother."

"I understand."

Hanzo had always hated how kind Genji was towards him, how easy it'd been for Genji to forgive while Hanzo pushed him away in a self-perpetuating cycle of deep guilt.

"I cannot promise I will be a better one in the future." Hanzo admitted.

"Has it ever crossed your smooth brick of a mind that I know, and that I will love you anyway?"

Hanzo could think of nothing to say to that, but he carefully, slowly brought his arms to wrap around his brother. He squeezed once, and then removed his hands. With substantial difficulty, he peeled Genji from his body.

"Happy birthday." Genji said. 

"I had already forgotten."

Hanzo followed Genji back inside and took a seat besides him on the crowded couch. Genji didn't try to pull Hanzo into a conversation, for which Hanzo was grateful. In fact, he tilted forwards onto Hanzo's shoulder, and fell fast asleep.

Jesse was seated at the breakroom table, in a round of poker with Lena, Ana, Lucio, Morrison, and Angela, who was wearing McCree's hat. He was engaged in a conversation with Lena that had her eyes wide with wonder. Hanzo eavesdropped on their exchange, unable to turn his attention to anything other than the man he loved.

"...totally fooled 'em." Jesse bragged as Ana raked in a small pile of chips. "Convinced the whole town that the pool table they'd just gotten in the middle of their parlor was gonna corrupt all their kids, turn 'em into scoundrels."

"Really?" Lena giggled, clearly drunk.

"Yeah. Followed it up with a pitch that the best way to keep youngins' happy and healthy was to stick them in a marching band. Made myself a fortune sellin' bass drums and piccolos to worried mothers."

"And then what happened?" 

"They always catch on eventually, so I'm usually outta town before that happens. But this time--"

"It's the plot of a musical, dear." Ana said, touching Lena on the arm. Lena formed a scoul that didn't reach her eyes.

"I'm sorry, Lena." said Jesse. "You just look so damn cute when I mess with you."

Lena giggled. Hanzo's eyes widened, stunned that Jesse had gotten away with saying something like that without getting a possibly deserved smack in the face.

Perhaps it was because he had sounded so genuine. And it was true, Lena did look adorable when she was being played. Hanzo had never noticed before.

Hanzo continued to watch as Ana called for them all to ante up. Before Jesse looked at his cards, he slipped on a pair of small, round glasses that had Hanzo's heart thumping.

Jesse glanced at his cards, didn't draw any new ones, and Hanzo was quick to notice the minuscule flick of Jesse's brow, and the speed in which he laid his chips down. It was still done with his usual, ruggedly graceful approach, but with the tiniest falter.

Hanzo smirked. He knew how this was going to end.

"Jesse's bluffing." Ana said. Jesse's right eyebrow flicked up a fraction of an inch as he eyed her to the side.

"Then why are you folding?" Lucio asked.

"Jack has good cards."

"No I don't." said Jack, who clearly had good cards.

Jesse continued to bet with content ease. Lena, Angela, and Lucio dropped out, but Morrison stayed in. The pile of chips between the two of them grew higher with each passing minute, which had the members of the table slowly inching their drinks closer to the edge. Jesse and Jack had both gotten add-ons, but now, Jack was starting to look nervous.

Morrison's hand started to twitch as Jesse matched his most recent bet with a smooth push of chips.

"How much am I losing if I fold right now?" Jack asked, eyeing the acre of tokens across the table.

"Twenty dollars." Ana answered.

"I'll cut my losses then." 

Ignoring Jesse's grin, Jack threw down his cards. Hanzo couldn't see them, but from Lucio's whistle, he got the idea.

"What did you have?" asked Lucio.

"Don't know." Jesse said, grinning at his boss. "These glasses make everything kinda blurry."

The skin under Hanzo's eyes dusted with pink.

"Now, where's my money?" Jesse followed, still eyeing Morrison.

Jack sighed, and pulled out his wallet. He handed forwards a bill that Jesse immediately folded into a tight wad along old creases before slipping into his own wallet.

"Don't you cry, boss, life's just a bunch a' people passin' money around." Jesse snickered. Lucio snorted.

"Gonna be real here, I was hoping to see you lose for once." Lucio said to Jesse.

"Pretty brave words comin' from a guy who's just a glorified rollerblader with a boombox an' some leg warmers."

Lucio laughed so hard that he had to grab the back of his chair to keep from falling.

"To tell you the truth, I though a' that half a year ago, and I've been waitin' for a time to say it." Jesse followed, and Lucio laughed harder.

Jesse's eyes landed on Hanzo, but were quick to leave as soon as he noticed Hanzo was staring back.

"Has anyone else noticed that Jesse only ever references pop-culture from before 2018?" asked Ana.

"Has anyone else noticed that Ana gets away with her nose up all our business, but the moment you ask her why she's leavin' Rein's place at six in the morning with the same blouse she had on the day before, she gets all touchy?" Jesse shot back, and the uproar was immediate.

Ana hid a face that was even redder than Hanzo's had been in her hands as she laughed, probably knowing that she deserved it. There were a few whistles, and Reinhardt looked up from his conversation with Mei at his name.

"She does that because we have sex!" Reinhardt laughed from the other side of the room, and Ana tightened her elbows further around her head.

Eventually, Ana got the nerve to face the world again. She wacked Jesse on the back of his head.

After that, it became a wild roast. Mostly between Jesse and Ana, but a few other members of the table offered some biting lines towards each other. Jack even dropped one about wishing he was dead.

Hanzo felt himself stand. He carefully laid Genji out against the couch. Genji stirred, but didn't visibly wake. Hanzo made his way towards the table, his legs moving on their own volition.

"Roast Shimada." Ana said to Jesse as Hanzo neared.

Hanzo's feet took him to Jesse's side. Jesse looked up and behind his own shoulder, grinning fiercely under Hanzo's eyes. Jesse winked, and Hanzo scowled so that no one could see he was melting.

"What should I make it about?" asked Jesse. "The fact that he's so old-fashion he uses a sock when he's got a hand under the blanket, or that he's so uptight he keeps the other one on?" 

What started from a chuckle from Ana turned into a fuller " _oooooo_ " as everyone else got the joke.

For the second time that night, Hanzo reached his hands violently towards Jesse, this time for the scruff of his collar. Hanzo started to move, dragging Jesse out of his chair and towards the door. 

"What I do, Hanz? What I do?" Jesse asked, and Hanzo could somehow hear the smile in his voice over the sound of the poker table's easy snickering.

There were a few more whistles, too, which Hanzo cut off with the door once they were outside.

Hanzo yanked Jesse forwards, ignoring a plethora of Jesse's protests and questions as he tried to find somewhere with no risk of anyone walking by. Either of their quarters? Too far away. The bathroom? Hanzo was desperate, but he wasn't _that_ desperate.

Formulating a truly terrible plan in his head, Hanzo stopped them two doors down from the breakroom. He held his grip on Jesse's collar with a strong hand as he punched the numbers '9457' into the door lock.

"Slow down there, sweetheart." Jesse begged as Hanzo opened the door. "I know you like seein' me confused as all hell, but this is Ana's office and I got no idea--"

With two hands, Hanzo pushed Jesse forwards into the room. He shut the door behind him, closed the blinds, and stuck the same chair he had sat in the last time he'd been in here under the doorknob. There was little light, save for a few strips of warm yellow wafting in from the edges of the window.

Hanzo turned to Jesse with the glare of an angry, crazed gunman. Jesse's mouth was moving, but Hanzo heard no words.

"Are you ever going to say it?" Hanzo growled as his hands reached across the small office to shove Jesse against the wall. Jesse's body hit with a hard thump that must have hurt, but it was nothing compared to the hell that his stupidity had brought Hanzo. Hanzo pushed forwards into Jesse's space with narrow eyes as Jesse's widened into saucers.

Jesse was silent. For a moment, neither of them moved. Hanzo kept his eyes burning, and Jesse started to shake his head in apologetic confusion.

A truly impenetrable skull.

"Jesse McCree." Hanzo said as he stepped onto the balls of his feet and grabbed Jesse by the front of his collar. "You are the dumbest, stupidest idiot I have ever had the immense displeasure of meeting, and I pray it stays that way until I'm ashes."

Jesse made an indistinguishable noise as Hanzo yanked him forwards and did what he had thought about doing a thousand times before.

Hanzo's eyes slipped closed as he pressed his mouth hard against Jesse's. There was no softness, only a desperation to get his point across. He pulled against Jesse's collar so roughly that Jesse lurched forward and Hanzo had to arch his back behind them.

He let go with a start as he realized Jesse's mouth was still and his eyes were wide open. Every drop of blood in Hanzo's face rushed away with the fear that he had somehow been misinterpreting everything for better part of the last month.

Jesse's face was set in raw shock, the most unhinged expression Hanzo had ever seen on the man's face. Jesse's breath hitched, and he brought two trembling fingers to cover his lips. Hanzo started to whirl away, unable to face what he had done, but Jesse didn't let him and Hanzo found himself pulled forwards and tucked into a warm chest.

"Hold on there, little birdie, I didn't go slack cause I didn't want it." Jesse muttered. The nickname was new, but Hanzo found his mind unable to process anything Jesse had just said.

Hanzo was silent. Jesse's chest swelled against Hanzo's head as he took a deep breath.

"Are you drunk?" Jesse asked, cutting the silence. 

"No. Stop asking."

Jesse gulped.

"Then why'd you kiss me?" he asked, and Hanzo could hear the screams of astonishment behind the words.

Hanzo slid away from the crook of Jesse chest. Trying and failing to keep from flushing, Hanzo dug through the pouch on his hip and pulled out a well-read letter. He handed it to Jesse, and turned his gaze at the crinkle of the paper being opened.

"Oh. Uh...oh. Well now." Jesse stammered. "Forgot I, wrote--uh, never mind."

"Will you just say it?"

Everything was far too serious. Hanzo was certain that Jesse could hear his heart thumping.

"What do you want me to say?" Jesse asked.

Hanzo forced the words to leave his tongue.

"If you are still...with me." he managed.

"You gonna kiss me again if I do?"

"That depends on your _delivery_." 

Hanzo looked up to see a pair of eyes softening from silver dollars to something more thoughtful. Jesse's mouth opened and closed a few times before any words came out.

"It's still true" said Jesse. "That I..."

"That you what? I need to hear--"

"I want you."

Hanzo forced himself to look at Jesse's face, at his acute glare and slight frown. Hanzo knew his face probably looked the same, but at that moment, he stopped focusing on himself.

"I love you. And I want you." Jesse followed.

"Is there a reason your tongue took so long to form those words?" 

"Hey now, I thought my delivery was pretty good."

Hanzo felt a flash of a hand on the back of his neck, and then a pull before his eyes slid closed and his lips were brought up to meet--

This time, it was a real, proper kiss, a mutual slide and catch of lips held together by a warm, electric pulse.

Jesse's right hand ghosted from the back of Hanzo's neck to dust against his cheek. Hanzo's skin was on fire, the soft warmth under his mouth spreading through his entire system, and although he would have denied the fact that he was trembling and not just from fear, it would have been a lie.

Hanzo pressed forwards, bumping their noses together, and Jesse's breath hitched. Jesse let his lips part, and Hanzo hummed at the first hint of tongue, just a small, unaggressive flicker in his mouth and the taste of Jesse's breath, a familiar cocktail of bad habbits. 

Their breath came together in a chorus of little sighs, and Hanzo could feel Jesse's pounding heart mixing with his own in a heavy, arrhythmic beat. Hanzo pushed his fingers through Jesse's hair and groaned at the immense satisfaction as metal fingers stroked the small of his back.

Hanzo Shimada really, really loved Jesse McCree.

Jesse pulled away with a fragile pop that would definitely be haunting Hanzo's dreams that night and Hanzo let his eyes open. He found them both flushed and panting, and the skin of his lips buzzed.

"Hold up, 'fore I get ahead myself," Jesse started, struggling to catch his breath. "How long have you had this?"

He pushed the letter back into Hanzo's hands. Hanzo slipped it into his hip pouch before Jesse could take it away.

"A few..." Hanzo trailed off, knowing what was coming.

"Days?"

"Weeks."

"A few weeks?!" Jesse exclaimed, so far from their previous near-whispers that Hanzo would have jumped had he been someone else.

Hanzo covered his face in his hands.

Jesse backed out of his spot against the wall and began to pace, his right hand glued to the back of his head.

"And you didn't tell me?" Jesse followed as he walked.

"You never told me."

"I didn't know you--wanted to--with me!"

Hanzo opened his mouth, ready to call Jesse an idiot again, when he was interrupted by a sudden, quiet chuckle. The laugh startled Hanzo, or at least the sudden shift in mood did.

"...Wait a minute." Jesse said, the snicker still on his lips. His pacing came to a stop, and he turned to Hanzo.

"What?" Hanzo asked.

"I'm thinkin' about the past few weeks, and--"

"Stop doing that."

"....all the stuff that you did and said--"

"Stop thinking."

"Were you tryin' to--"

"No."

"Were you tryin' to break me?"

Jesse's new smile was insufferable, and the way it widened with every passing word had Hanzo's ears burning.

"No." Hanzo repeated in a pointless and last ditch effort. He tipped his face into Jesse's chest, knowing there was nothing he could do about the mortification that was about to transpire as Jesse continued to laugh with nothing short of giddiness.

"Really, now? Cause that would would have a lot a' your behavior over the past few weeks makin' a fuck ton more sense."

"No it wouldn't." 

"All the teasin' and comments and stunts--"

" _No_."

"Bein' all cute so that I couldn't keep my hands off--"

"I wasn't _._ "

"Yes you were. And that bit with the painting? We're gonna have a long talk later about that bit with the painting."

Hanzo's face burned a hole through the front of Jesse's shirt as Jesse pressed his smile into the top of Hanzo's head in a series of delicate kisses. Hanzo's face burned even harder when he realized that in the end, Jesse hadn't even been the one who had broken.

"Have I not been embarrassed enough for one night?" Hanzo pleaded, and his humiliation was furthered by the smile he found on his mouth.

"Not even close. You deserve to be embarrassed. Fuck, I'd be embarrassed. That shit you pulled was embarrassing."

Against his own will, Hanzo's own shrill laugh mixed with Jesse's through his red face.

"Why must you wound me?" Hanzo sighed.

"Cause it's really, really cute."

Jesse reached to undo Hanzo's hair ribbon, and was met with no resistance. Hanzo sat in his own blush, struggling to cool down until he realized that he wasn't the only person who should be feeling like a dog who had tracked mud on the living room carpet.

"God damn, I love you." Jesse said again, warmth mixing with the butter. Hanzo would have been shocked by the openness if he hadn't been best friends with it for a year and a half.

"You're an idiot."

"Course I am. I'm in love."

"No. You are truly an idiot. You were able to recognize differences in my behavior, but you never stopped to question my motivations. Why else would I have acted the way I did, if not...?"

"Hey, I thought you were lonely! I dunno. And at this point, I'm pretty used to the torment you put me through round the clock."

Hanzo pulled his face out of Jesse's chest and attempted to fan himself with his hand to little success.

"I hope that does not mean you have been desensitized." Hanzo said with a smile that just wouldn't go away.

"Not even in the slightest, little birdie."

Hanzo's chin was lifted and his mouth was brought up to meet Jesse's once again. This time, Jesse's lips parted right away.

Hanzo sighed and melted as he was carefully maneuvered backwards until the backs of his knees hit Ana's desk. He pulled his roaming hands off of Jesse just long enough to push himself into a seating position on her desk, right on a pile of papers that Hanzo couldn't care less about. Jesse's hands stroked his waist through the folds of his yakata, and the tongue curling around his own was slow and delightfully soft. 

Even with most of the components of his mouth occupied, Jesse was still grining like an idiot.

Hanzo's left hand slid through Jesse's hair, down his chest, and to the cup on his waist before settling in the back pocket of Jesse's jeans. He let his fingers squeeze, just a bit, as their mouths picked up speed, twisting together in a warm, deep flurry, somewhere between needy and indulgent.

The sound of it all, of their mouths sliding together, of Jesse's sighs, and his little groan with Hanzo caught his lower lip between teeth was intoxicating.

"Little birdie?" Hanzo asked against Jesse's lips.

"'s what I call you in my head." Jesse mumbled back. 

"And I'm still caught on sweetheart."

Jesse pushed his smile closer against Hanzo's and slipped a hand underneath the folds of Hanzo's robe. Hanzo shivered under the palm that slid up his leg, passed his knees to the bare skin of his outer thigh.

"Can't tell you how long I've wanted to touch you." Jesse groaned, his breath hot and welcome against Hanzo's mouth. Jesse chuckled when his fingers came in contact with the knife Hanzo kept strapped to his leg.

"As I expected. Your memory has always been unimpressive." Hanzo replied, ghosting his lips over Jesse's before pushing in for another whirl of kisses.

The passage of time became untrackable. Hanzo's yakata became more and more of a mess with every passing moment.

Hanzo pulled their chests flush together and welcomed the knee that knocked his legs apart with just the tiniest bit of pressure. Hanzo's hands found their ways under Jesse's flannel with the pop of a few button clasps, and he grabbed behind the backs of Jesse's smooth, warm shoulder blades. Hanzo's back arched into the exchange, and Jesse's metal hand wrapped behind Hanzo's back in a secure hold, as his other hand carded and pulled through Hanzo's hair, down his face, over the hair on his chin. Hanzo felt a warm wetness touch against his cheeks, and--

"Are you crying?" Hanzo asked, pulling back to see Jesse's eyes leaking a few tears into his undying grin.

"Who are you, my mama? Let a man indulge."

Hanzo shook his head but still kissed away the drops before they could reach the end of Jesse's face.

"You are so..." Hanzo started against Jesse's cheek, "unashamed."

"You really think I give a shit about anything right now? My coworker Jim-Halperts my ass for eigthteen months, and then he kisses me. God damn."

"Halpert--what?"

"Don't worry about it."

Hanzo pulled Jesse in for another series of open-mouthed kisses, no longer caring about the slickness of the tears that were still streaming.

"I will say, I admire your ability to multitask." Hanzo said as he pulled away for air.

"Multitask?"

"Yes. Not many men can near the edge of sobbing while maintaining a steady erection." 

"Coulda' pretended you didn't notice." Jesse replied with the most adorable, sheepish smirk Hanzo had ever seen.

Jesse captured Hanzo's lips in another kiss. At this point, Hanzo should have been used to the sensation, but each new time had his breath hitching again and his body quivering under Jesse's strong grip.

"Manzoku." Hanzo muttered, long and low as his bottom lip caught against Jesse's teeth.

"Don't quite know what you said, but I liked the way it sounded."

Hanzo could have stayed there kissing Jesse McCree until Ana walked into her the office the next morning, but Jesse pulled away with the look of a sudden realization.

"We're in Ana's office." Jesse said, and Hanzo tore his eyes away from the redness of his lips.

"We are."

"I just made eye contact with a picture a' me and Fareeha at the fair."

"I cannot imagine that would be pleasant."

"And the rest of the team is still in the breakroom."

Hanzo groaned loudly with the realization that he was going to have to return at some point, it being his birthday and what not. The thought of walking in again, having to keep a straight face...

"Must we leave?" asked Hanzo as Jesse helped him down from the desk.

"I left my hat in there." Jesse replied, highlighting his values.

Hanzo took a few steps forward and faced the door that had led him into this predicament. He felt a pleasant, warm pressure against his back as Jesse's arms wrapped around him from behind, and another, more stubbled pressure on his neck as Jesse leaned in to kiss the right crook of his shoulder.

"Look." Jesse said against Hanzo's skin. "I don't wanna go back out there. But the longer we wait, the worse it'll be."

"I know." Hanzo groaned.

"Though, I guess I should ask. You doin' anything tonight?"

Hanzo chuckled, light and low.

"No, but you are." he answered.

"Oh. And what am I doing tonight, Shimada?"

"Coming over. We need to have quite the conversation."

"So there's gonna be talkin' involved?"

"Your mouth will not be left unoccupied, I will say that much."

Hanzo could feel Jesse smile against his neck. His breath hitched as Jesse's flesh hand found its way once again inside of his robe, while the metal one worked through his hair.

"I do feel the need to say that we don't have to." Jesse started. "I'd be happy to do just 'bout anything, long as you're there with me."

"I want it." 

Jesse groaned, his hand pushing aside Hanzo's underwear to travel over the delicate skin of his inner, upper thighs as he pulled their bodies flush together, and Hanzo's abdomen tightened at the details of Jesse's front side that he could feel againt his ass. Hanzo hummed, and pushed his head aside so that his neck could be suckled with more depth.

"I couldn't help but notice how a lot of the little stunts you pulled over the last weeks had a common theme." Jesse said, nipping under Hanzo's ear.

"And what would that be?"

"Seems like when you wern't trying to pull at my poor heart, you were tieing strings 'round the front a' my pants."

"It seemed an easy way to capture your interest, yes. What of it?"

Hanzo shuddered as Jesse's fingers came in contact with what they had been teasing at. He closed his eyes as Jesse's hot breath spilled honey against his ear.

"I do hope you are prepared to deal with the ramifications of the knots you made." Jesse whispered. 

Hanzo would have denied that he let out any sort of stuttering, needy sigh at Jesse's words. He also would have denied that his back twisted in the tiniest arch. 

"Jesse?" Hanzo asked.

"Yes?"

"You are being very distracting."

Jesse pulled away with palpapul reluctance, and Hanzo suddenly felt colder. He readusted his undergarments and clothing while Jesse struggled to rearranged himself in his pants.

"We just gotta dip back in 'till everyone falls asleep or is too drunk to notice we're gone." Jesse murmured, half to himself.

"Should not take long." Hanzo replied, one hand on the doorknob.

"Woah, hold up. You don't need a...minute?"

Hanzo eyed the diminishing tent in the fabric of his clothing.

"No." he said. "All I needed was the image of my present company behind the dumpster of an American chain restaurant."

"Hey, that's my go to."

"I have been aware." 

Hanzo opened the door.

The walk back was short but still managed to include more than one instance of ass pinching. Jesse reentered the break room first, as Hanzo didn't have it in him to let them return at the same time.

A minute went by. Hanzo opened the door to find the poker game still going on, and walked in only to realize his hair was still down and his ribbon was in Ana's office. But he kept his head high, sat down at the poker table between Lucio and Jesse, and refused to make eye contact with anyone. Ana delt him in.

"How did your business go?" she asked.

Hanzo folded. 

 

~~~~

 

"...what I'm sayin' is, I'm real sweet on you, and I just wanna make sure that's clear--"

"Jesse--"

"An' I know we ain't really slowed down and talked yet 'bout what we want, but I--"

"Jesse--"

"I'm serious about this, is all, and--"

"Jesse, I am aware of--"

"I really think that you might be my...I know that soul mates are just a corporate lie made up to sell key chains, but--"

" _Jesse._ " Hanzo growled. "Is there a reason seeing me unclothed is what warranted this speech?"

Jesse scowled.

Hanzo put a hand behind his resting head to get a better look at his companion. In between his loosely parted legs, Jesse knelt on the floor, his thighs flush with the tatami mats and futon, and his upright body perpendicular to Hanzo's. Five minutes ago, after what had started as kissing against the inside of Hanzo's front door had lead to half a round of the world's most sensual frottage, Jesse had carried Hanzo to his room, got him on the low mattress, lined up Hanzo's pelvis with the edge of the sheets, talked him into bottoming, fingered him into oblivion, gotten naked, brushed away the cloth of Hanzo's yakata for good, and started stammering excessively.

Stammering while he was two inches away from a line shot up the middle.

"What, I ain't allowed to be romantic?" Jesse pleaded.

"There is romance and there is stuttering for minutes on end as I watch the elegance you've worked so hard to make me see in you dissolve in seconds. Prove to me that I did not make a mistake allowing you over me." Hanzo said, running a finger up through the thickening line of hair under Jesse's navel, brushing passed the slicked edge of the condom Jesse had already rolled down. 

Jesse eyes fluttered half-shut with a groan, and Hanzo was relieved that he had bought the confidence act. 

"I'm sorry." Jesse mumbled, and his apology was so genuine that Hanzo's intense sexual frustration was momentarily superseded by mild alarm.

"What is your hesitation?" Hanzo asked, his voice and face suddenly softening. "My apologies if I am being too--" 

"It's nothin'."

"Jesse."

"It's dumb."

"Jesse."

"Fine. I reckon I ain't never fucked somethin' so...beautiful before, and I'm kinda uncollected by the...thought a' actually..."

Hanzo was taken aback by Jesse's response. From Jesse's expression, Hanzo could tell that the line wasn't meant to be poetic, but rather a legitimate explanation for his behavior.

"It seems strange, then, that you chose a position where you could see all of me." said Hanzo.

"Hey, I'm only over here cause your tiny floor bed ain't gonna fit both of us."

Hanzo tongue itched to pull Jesse into a speech about the cultural history of his "tiny floor bed", but refrained with the suspicion that Jesse was trying to distract him with comments that made less sense the more Hanzo thought about them.

"What do you fear?" Hanzo asked.

Jesse frowned.

"I'm not right sure I know exactly what." Jesse answered. "Just, what if I break you or somethin'?"

Hanzo laughed at the thought. He ran his pointed eyes over Jesse's lean torso and waist in a silent reminder that although Jesse may have been a good five inches taller, Hanzo weighed at least as much.

"I'll admit that sounds kinda senseless out loud." Jesse followed.

Hanzo had a suspicion about the root of Jesse's hesitance. Keeping his legs spread and in place, he tilted upwards and forwards to catch Jesse in an embrace. Jesse stiffened in surprise, but started to relax and returned the gesture after a heart-beat. 

"It's me." said Hanzo into the heat of Jesse's chest. Through eyes that radiated as much warmth as he could manage, Hanzo looked up to the face he'd seen a thousand times before, that he trusted and knew every bit of.

"I know." Jesse replied, lips against the top of Hanzo's head. "I'm sorry, it's just..."

"I am only a human. And despite the monologue I delivered in Anubis, I am not a god." 

"I know." 

"And although I will never, ever reapeat these words, you are not the only one who is thoroughly terrified."

Jesse squeezed Hanzo's shoulders, and Hanzo planted a light kiss on the dry, warm skin of Jesse's pectoral. It was true. Hanzo was terrified. He hadn't made love to someone he cared about in more than a decade.

"Alright." Jesse whispered. "I'm ready."

"I am pleased to hear it." Hanzo murmured back in a less vulnerable tone, and shifted an inch forwards so Jesse could feel how hard he still was. "I was not going to beg, but your company tends to leave me with the incorrigible desire to be filled."

Hanzo snickered as Jesse flushed and pushed him back onto the sheets. Jesse shuffled his right knee onto the futon for leverage, and manhandled Hanzo's leg over his lifted thigh with his flesh hand. He placed his metal one flat against the bed next to Hanzo's waist, lowing himself slightly but still giving both of them a solid sixty degrees of viewing ability. Not trusting Jesse to not waste time, Hanzo grabbed him by the cock and lined him up.

He hid his face under his hand as Jesse pushed in, wincing at the slight burn and the cold sting of the lubricant that had gotten cold during Jesse's ramblings. 

"Oh." Jesse said again once their pelvises were fully drawn together, the skin under his eyes and across the bridge of his nose turning pink under the olive. 

"What?"

"Tight."

"Good tight?"

Jesse squeezed his eyes shut.

" _Yeah_." he groaned. He remained unmoving, waiting for a signal like a gentleman. The discomfort Hanzo felt was quickly replaced by something more pleasant, as Jesse's fingers had done their jobs.

"Are you going to move?" Hanzo asked sharply. 

"Impatient."

"I can assure you I have been more patient with you than you could ever imagine."

Jesse responded by grabbing the underside of the thigh Hanzo had hooked over his right leg and giving an experimental roll of his hips, and then another when he was met with no resistance.

In was painfully slow, more of a tease than anything. Hanzo pressed forwards with his own pelvis in an invitation, and muttered an order regarding " _harder_ " and " _please_ ". 

"Bossy." said Jesse.

"I will not break." Hanzo replied, meeting Jesse's gaze with as intent of a glare as he could manage.

Jesse's bit his lip.

Hanzo's stomach dropped with a flash as Jesse pushed forwards hard. In a sudden flurry of movement, Jesse's thrusts deepened into rhythmic rolls that had both of their breathing ragged with the new, immensely satisfying sensation. For a few long moments, Hanzo was unable to say anything, or even do anything besides gawk at the mesmerizing twist of Jesse's torso and his half-lidded, blissful expression.

"God damn." Jesse said as he caught sight of Hanzo's face.

"Is there something on your mind?" Hanzo replied, struggling hard to remain aloof as he bounced against the mattress with unquestionable enthusiasm.

"There's somethin' on my mind, alright, I'm just tryin' to find words with any sort a' elegance to 'em to speak it with."

"Elegance is waste of effort. Sputter for a while about how much you wanted this."

The hand on Hanzo's leg tightened, and the metal fingers Jesse was using to support himself started to tremble.

"Wanted you so bad." Jesse whispered. "Even before your little game."

"Oh?"

"Fuck, you don't know the hell it was being friends with you."

Though his parted lips, Hanzo's breath caught at the peak of every thrust. Jesse's hips moved with experience, in a fluid, unbroken motion that was threatening to break the barriers between sensual and downright dirty.

"It was a mutual damnation." Hanzo admitted.

"Is that so?"

"The trousers you choose to wear are sinful and the way you--"

Hanzo cut himself off with a moan as Jesse hit the spot he had been searching for.

"What was that now, baby doll?" Jesse asked.

"Stand with your hands at your belt, bringing my attention to your..." Hanzo trailed off. Speaking had become more difficult.

"My cock?"

"Yes.  _Chikushou_. Yes."

Jesse eyes narrowed dangerously.

"Any place in particular you wanted it?" asked Jesse, the asshole that he was. 

"Between my..." Hanzo replied, struggling to answer over his own breath.

"Between your what? Between your...?"

" _Legs_."

Jesse swore loudly, and Hanzo felt both of them tighten.

Hanzo's hands twisted through the sheets. He found himself ditching his usual self-consciousness as the slowly peaking euphoria Jesse was bringing with his hips became more important. He knew he looked like a mess, but he just couldn't bring himself to care. He focused instead on the heat of Jesse's upper chest and the diminishing composure in the man's face.

"You..." Jesse murmured. "You are..."

"Speak the words."

"Tight. God damn, you hug me good."

" _Oh_."

"Even with a rubber, you're fuckin'...detailed." Jesse said as he slammed forwards into the spot that had Hanzo seeing white. Jesse's words were stated with only half of his usual grace, and approximately three times the amount of breath. Hanzo squirmed under Jesse's hips in approval.

"Tell me that you thought about this." Hanzo ordered.

"Damn it, Hanz, I couldn't stop. It was so bad." Jesse admitted with a sheepish little scoff. "Sometimes I'd go weeks without gettin' a hand 'round myself, cause I knew as soon as I closed my eyes all I was gonna see was my best friend's face begging me for it."

"You wanted me to beg?" Hanzo snickered, amused with the idea. He let his eyes flutter closed.

"Wanted you to do a lot of things. Fuckin' tortured me. I ain't even kidding. That's how bad I wanted you."

"Elaborate."

"Wanted to see you come, most of all."

"If you keep your eyes open, that fantasy will be fulfilled very shortly." Hanzo admitted, drunk off of warmth and fullness and the stab of Jesse's cock against his prostate.

The hand on Hanzo's leg tightened.

"Good to hear." Jesse groaned. "I ain't gonna last too long, you got me so keyed up."

Hanzo opened his eyes. He had spent far too much time over the last year and a half admiring Jesse's body, the hard, lean muscle under soft skin. He lacked bulk and hyper-definition in his core, but he was undeniably gorgeous and anything else might have made him appear excessive and a bit vain. The scars peppering across Jesse's chest were familiar, and there was something warm about the sight of them.   

Hanzo brought his gaze back up to find Jesse's eyes running down his chest, ogling his sleeve of tattoos, getting caught on the muscles of his stomach, going down passed his swollen, pink--

" _Christ_." Jesse moaned, his smooth rhythm starting to falter for something rougher as his flush intensified.

"What is it?"

"I, uh...I made the mistake of lookin'."

"What? Looking at-- _oh_." Hanzo said as he twisted his neck to see where their hips met, only to pull his gaze away because if he spent even another second watching Jesse's cock slide in and out of him, he was going to spill early.

Actually, he was going to come either way. Jesse hitched both of his legs up on the futon and his body fell forward, bumping their chests together. Hanzo brought the thigh that wasn't pulled over Jesse's right leg to rest against the man's side, and Jesse resumed the rutting of his pelvis. The new position wasn't as internally stimulative for Hanzo, but when Jesse snaked a flesh hand between their bodies and started to pump, Hanzo found it wasn't a problem.

Jesse captured their lips together in a bruising, messy kiss before buiring his face in the crook of Hanzo's neck and his free hand through loose, black hair. Hanzo's stroked Jesse's hair with one hand as Jesse's rhythm faltered further.

"You're the most gorgeous goddamn thing I've ever seen." said Jesse, and breathy or not, Jesse's voice was welcome against Hanzo's ear, and added to the fluttering, peaking warmth pooling in his stomach, teetering him on the edge. Hanzo didn't know how to tell Jesse that the orgasm he was traveling towards was frighteningly intense and unfamiliarly large, and he had no idea what it was going to be like when it came. He settled on not saying anything at all and making it his future self's problem.

He suspected, however, that Jesse was going to beat him by a few seconds, if he was reading the signs of Jesse's ragged breathing and untied mouth correctly.

"I'm gonna--" Jesse mumbled, and Hanzo took the hint.

Jesse's teeth grazed Hanzo's neck, and Hanzo felt a bite as Jesse struggled to muffle a cry. With a jolt, Jesse sputtered out a string of profanities strung together by a messy declaration of love as he pressed his hips forward in a few short, half thrusts that were accompanied by more tragically half-muted sounds.

There was nothing quite like watching Jesse McCree's composure break down. 

"Ikisou. _Iku_." Hanzo stuttered in warning, hoping Jesse got the drift.

Hanzo rutted into Jesse's hand, starting to peak just a second after Jesse had finished. Hanzo tried to bury his face in Jesse's neck to stifle the loud yelp forming in his throat, but Jesse lifted his head away and shifted his weight back onto his free hand.

"Wanna see your face." Jesse explained as he gave a final pull of Hanzo's cock.

Hanzo tried as desperately as he could to convey without words that no, no, no, Jesse's _couldn't_ look at his face, because he was about to come so hard and he had no idea what his face was going to do and--

Hanzo bit his own hand as he spilled white streaks over both their stomachs, biting down sharp sighs and profanities in a language that Jesse didn't know. The climax lasted a few elated seconds longer than Hanzo was accustom to, and his hips jerked forwards into Jesse's hand with another tiny burst of come. Hanzo's fingers started to taste like copper.

Hanzo's back fell against the mattress, satisfied. He hadn't realized he'd lifted it.

Jesse landed on top of him and pulled him into a tight hug. Jesse was too warm, and his skin was slick with sweat, but Hanzo found himself too limp and pliable to do anything about it.

"Jesus Christ." Jesse panted, and it took Hanzo a few seconds to realize Jesse had just spoken.

Hanzo mumbled a string of sounds in response.

"You alright there, darlin'?" asked Jesse.

"Atsui."

"Hmmm?"

"Too hot."

"Oh." Jesse chuckled, and he pushed himself onto his hands and slowly pulled out. Hanzo closed his eyes, and felt the mattess shake to his right as Jesse flopped down beside him. There wasn't a lot of room, but Hanzo was content with that.

With his eyes still closed, Hanzo reached for Jesse's hand, and was greeted with warm, metal fingers wrapping around his own. 

"That..." Jesse started, still trying to catch his breath, "We just made love."

Hanzo didn't know how to respond besides humming in agreement, as his brain and body had turned into a blissful mush. He nuzzled Jesse's shoulder with his head and smiled as his mind whirled with debilitating gratification.

"No, you don't get it Hanzo." Jesse followed. "You know what I woulda' done this morning if somebody told me that by the end of the day, I was gonna be naked and kissed and in your bed?"

"Mmm?"

"I'd a' picked up all my cups individually and dropped 'em on the floor."

"Mmmhm."

"Fuck, you're doped." said Jesse, turning on his side to run his other hand through Hanzo's dampened hair. Hanzo twisted up to kiss Jesse's cheek.

Jesse snickered.

"You remember when you did that back in Anubis?" he asked. 

Hanzo nodded lazily.

"I thought you were trying to kill me." Jesse finished and Hanzo pushed his head away with a smile.

Hanzo mumbled a protest as the bed dipped again and his side suddenly became cold with his company exiting the futon. He did, however, tilt his head to get a good look at Jesse's ass while the man scoured the room for a trash can.

"'s in the bathroom." Hanzo slurred, and Jesse gave him a smile before heading off to unwrap his wang.

Jesse returned with a fresh towel, and Hanzo was more than thankful when Jesse started to clean him off, saving Hanzo the trouble of having to move even a little bit.

"God, you're beautiful." said Jesse as he soaked semen out of Hanzo's abdomen.

"Characteristically untimely." Hanzo muttered back, finally able to stop slurring.

"Hey now, little birdie, I've seen you covered in four, no, five kinds a' bodily fluids now, and I reckon you pulled off every--ow! Why didja hit me?"

Hanzo grinned, flattened Jesse against the sheets, and tucked his head into Jesse's chest.

Jesse sighed, low and wistful.

"Why a bird?" Hanzo asked once he was settled. "Not a dragon?"

"You look a little avian in the face, and I like your drawlings."

"Oh."

"And whenever we're settin' up defenses, I can always look up and see you shuffling around, up on a wire."

Hanzo pulled Jesse down for a kiss, soft and slow. Hanzo's mouth melted into Jesse's, and every muscle in his body loosened further as their lips moved together with mutual laziness.

Hanzo broke the kiss with a sudden wave of exhaustion. It had been late when they had gotten to the party, it had been late when they'd left, and it had been late when they'd left a second time. Not to mention that he was still recovering.

"God damn." Jesse said again as Hanzo closed his eyes.

Hanzo pulled his opposing hand over Jesse's chest, and nuzzled his way into his neck. Jesse kissed the top of his head, and several peaceful moments went by before Jesse broke the silence with a tiny yawn.

"Happy birthday." Jesse said.

"Huh?" 

"I said, happy birthday."

"What?"

"Cause it's your birthday?"

"Oh."

"Did you forget?"

"It is not what's on my mind right now."

Hanzo joined Jesse in a snicker. Jesse broke it off with another yawn. 

"What time is it?" Jesse asked.

"It was two in the morning when you arrived."

"Mind if I fall asleep?"

"Not at all."

Jesse murmured a response, and his fingers lightly twisted with the hand Hanzo had on Jesse's pectoral.

"Hanzo?" asked Jesse as Hanzo's eyelids fluttered closed.

"Yes?"

"I'm still about eighty percent sure I got shot back in Anubis and this slice a' heaven is just a fictitious romp through my rapidly diminishin' brain signals, but on the off chance it ain't, you still gonna be here when I wake up?"

Hanzo chuckled.

"Yes, Jesse. We will be needing to have that conversation we put off."

"Conversation? I reckon you already know what I'm gonna say."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, I wrote it down and let it get lost in my quarters."

Hanzo snickered.

"I love you. You wanna be together?" Jesse asked simply.

"Yes."

"Alright. You're my boyfriend now. Conversation over."

Silence fell, mostly due to their mutual exhaustion. Hanzo layed across Jesse's chest in wonder. His brain itched to ponder complex topics of the situation they were in and the time it had taken them to get there; like the reasons behind his own cowardice, Jesse's rampant stupidity, Hanzo's fear of what the future would hold, and the fact that his hair ribbon was _still_ in Ana's office, but instead, he snuck a peak at Jesse's adorable, sleepy face, closed his eyes, and enjoyed the warmth.

He could think about the complicated stuff tomorrow.

Hanzo opened one eye when he realized that he still hadn't said it. With his face snug in the crook of Jesse's neck, Hanzo forced himself to open his mouth.

He wasn't sure how long he spent, trying to get the words out, battling with his mouth to get it to form the sounds.

"Aishi..." Hanzo wispered, trailing off as he lost his nerve.

He gulped and tried again.

"Aishiteru." he mumbled, and squeezed his eyes shut.

Jesse snored. Oh well.

Hanzo would have more chances to say it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah I always do the cut off kiss what of it fite me
> 
>  
> 
> Whenever I feel guilty about writing weird porn I remember that Tom Robbins wrote weirder sex than me and he's famous.


End file.
